Sager NP8662 and Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200RPM IS NOW LOUD!

Ok, I've had my NP8662 Since August this year (2009). I haven't used it a whole lot, but enough to know it's little sounds and quirks. I've started using it a lot more lately.

I don't know if I didn't notice it before, or if my hard drive is making a lot more noise now. It makes a very loud tinny clicking when writing or reading data. It doesn't seem to affect performance so far, and not 100% of the time while it's reading/writing data.

I bought this machine from XoticPC and just got the standard 3 year warranty that comes with it. Do you think they'd exchange the hard drive without having to send the whole machine to them, as in cross ship a new drive to me and I return the old?

Or is this a typical sound from the NP8662 drives?

I have run speedfan pretty much since I got the machine and hard drive temps have never gone over 52C, although normal at load temps are about 50C, and idle at about 44C.

 

Hmmm, weird. I just shut down for a couple minutes, powered back up, and now it's quiet again. Strange. Is this an indicator of impending doom?

 

That is very commn with the 7200.4 500gb HDD from Seagate. The same happend to me and after a while, when it made the clicking noise, the comp freezed for a second or two. Very annoying when playing CS or something!

I send it back to my vendor and they replaced it with a 5400.7 640gb WD HDD. Very happy so far and it performs better than my seagate did. The Seagate had (developed) more than clicking problems.

I`ve had two seagates in my TU, and both were faulty. From now on, only WD for me

 

I typically go with WD drives, but many reports I've read show that in the NP8662 the WD runs much hotter and typically near the 60C limit at load.

Also, I didn't think WD made a 500GB 7200RPM HDD? Maximum is 320GB @ 7200RPM? I have a WD 500GB 5400RPM that I had in another laptop that I sold and put back in the original 250GB that was in there, so maybe I'll use that.

I'd like 7200RPM performance, but maybe I can't have the best of all worlds. Or maybe get a 320GB 7200RPM WD. Hmmmm, difficult choices.

 

FROM THE FORUM @ SEAGATE THE SOLUTION FOR MOMENTUS 500GB..

Dell's website that provide firmware updates for some recent Seagate drives with clicking. Released 12/2/2009.

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...typeid=-1&dateid=-1&formatid=-1&fileid=366463



Firmware 4SDM1 or 5SDM1 fixes clicking noise on Seagate 2.5" 7200RPM HDD's Model #'s:



500G - ST9500420AS DP/N G629T



I tried the R250679.exe and it would not install on a oem ST9500420AS with firmware 2SDM1 which i bought for my MSI Notebook.

The dell installer indicated that it found a good model number, but because of serial number i think it did not find a good firmware version.

So i add the files to my bootable media and run the " FDLH -m HOLLIDAY -f 0005SDM1.LOD -i ST9500420AS -b -v " command in dos.

Then the utility autoscaned and updated the 5SDM1 firmware succesfully.


WORKED FOR ME (-;

 

Thank you! I don't know if it worked yet or not, but it didn't brick my hard drive! +1 rep for you!

 

I managed to update mine as well...