A clicking sort of clunking noise on my Vaio, any ideas ?

I have recently bought a new Sony Vaio AR51SU laptop and in the main its a great machine, one thing that is annoying me a bit is a clicking/clunking noise that i am getting thats coming from an area that seems to be around the left hand side of the laptop. It happens about every minute and a half and its then silent in between apart from the fan noise.

I can`t see that it was designed this way as it can be quite annoying when your in a silent room, its not massively loud but its loud enough to draw your attention to it. Does anyone else have a similar AR series model and can you tell me if this happens on your machine ?

 

Sounds like you have a mechanical problem, which implies that your hard disk is making the clicking noises - every once in a while the read/write heads will park, which is the cause of the noise. Do you know model HD you have, and if it is on the left side?

 

tun off the option that puts to sleep the hard disk

 

The model is a VGN-AR51SU, yeh the clicking sound does seem to be coming from the left hand side.

Where abouts is that option as i`ll give it a try, i have vista ultimate ?

 

I meant the make and model of the hard drive itself; even the same laptop models have HDs of different manufacturers and specs. The reason why I'm asking is that some drives tend to be noisier than others, and unfortunately there isn't much that can be done in such a case.

 

Sorry i didn`t realise, i`m half asleep here lol. How do i find out the manufacturer of my hard drives, i know that they are 2 X 250 GB - Serial ATA-150 - 4200 rpm ? Ive looked in Device manager but i didn`t see them there.

 

http://www.hdtune.com/

Use this, it'll also give you SMART info on the drive.

 

They should be there. Under diskdrives.

Here's something you can do: Install HDTune pro: http://www.hdtune.com/
run it, and then on the last tab set the AAM value to minimal sound. See if that helps.

 

Not sure how much this helps - but I recently dropped my Toshiba Satellite off my desk and ever since then, the fan has been acting unusual - every couple of seconds, even on low load, it would start up and whirr loudly. And the hard drive clicks every couple of seconds too, when it didn't used to do that before. I think if the clicking is obtrusive enough to be noticeable, it might be an issue during shipping or something that jolted the laptop and caused some sort of problem similar to mine.

 

I think i have got somewhere now as to the manufacturer of my hard drives, HD tune wouldn`t give me this info as all it said in the info bar was intel.

Does this sound right as i have downloaded Everest Ultimate, i have 2 x 250GB drives.

FUJITSU MHX2250BT

FUJITSU MHX2250BT

 

I've got the same model.
There are several click sounds. HDDs seem to produce soft bump and click noises when parking/unparking their heads. These don't annoy me at all even when it's absolutely quiet in my room.
There's a different, very infrequent (maybe once per hour) and much more distinct click sound. Since this one's so different I suspect it might be caused by the optical drive even though there's no disc in it.
PWR

 

@ The_Stig: Be sure to back-up your information just in case the noise turns out to be from an HDD failure. Some hard-drive noise is normal, but sudden whirring and clunking sounds that weren't there before can be a bad sign.

BTW, love your driving on Top Gear! =)

 

Thanks to everyone thats replied so far its appreciated, this is the point really because with not owning a vaio before and with this being a machine that was bought new i don`t know what sounds should be present and which ones shouldn`t be.

This clicking/clunking noise every so often can be a bit annoying, i would be very suprised if it was designed this way. The best way to describe it is it sounds like a loud relay switch opening or closing with that familiar loud click sound.

 

Yeah, very light, continuous clicking would be normal read/write operations - and a single, longer slide-click sound would be head parking (similar to when going into stand-by or shutdown). Maybe check out the same model in a store, and see if the HDD noise level is similar?