Thinkpads Forum

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 1:30 am**

Hello Thinkpad forums

I've had my T41p for some time now. Actually since Fall last year. I've never really noticed the harddrive getting hot before, but since the day before yesterday, the right palm rest has started to get incredibly hot when running on AC. So hot, that it gets uncomfortable to use the palmrest.

Has anyone had experience with these sudden changes in temperature?
Is there any specific sotware what could be to blame here?
Are there settings for the HDD that could remedy this?

Best Regards

Peter Carlsen

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 2:00 am**

Torque wrote:Hello Thinkpad forums

I've had my T41p for some time now. Actually since Fall last year. I've never really noticed the harddrive getting hot before, but since the day before yesterday, the right palm rest has started to get incredibly hot when running on AC. So hot, that it gets uncomfortable to use the palmrest.

Has anyone had experience with these sudden changes in temperature?
Is there any specific sotware what could be to blame here?
Are there settings for the HDD that could remedy this?

Best Regards

Peter Carlsen

The most probable cause is the continuous use of the drive. #1 candidate would be p2p networks (especially bittorrent). If you are using Windows, I think it rearranges the files for better performance, but it shouldnt do it all the time. Have you got any programs running 24/7 of your laptop?

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 2:07 am**

stgreek wrote:
Torque wrote:Hello Thinkpad forums

I've had my T41p for some time now. Actually since Fall last year. I've never really noticed the harddrive getting hot before, but since the day before yesterday, the right palm rest has started to get incredibly hot when running on AC. So hot, that it gets uncomfortable to use the palmrest.

Has anyone had experience with these sudden changes in temperature?
Is there any specific sotware what could be to blame here?
Are there settings for the HDD that could remedy this?

Best Regards

Peter Carlsen

The most probable cause is the continuous use of the drive. #1 candidate would be p2p networks (especially bittorrent). If you are using Windows, I think it rearranges the files for better performance, but it shouldnt do it all the time. Have you got any programs running 24/7 of your laptop?

I don't use P2P clients, and don't really have any large programs running resident.

But heres a list of the bigger ones always running:
AVG antivirus
FireFox
MSN Messenger
Skype
Autodesk Inventor 9
Autodesk AutoCAD 2004
QCTray.exe
MS Office

But I hardly think that any of these are accessing the drive nonstop. Maybe the antivirus.[/list]

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 2:42 am**

Torque wrote: I don't use P2P clients, and don't really have any large programs running resident.

But heres a list of the bigger ones always running:
AVG antivirus
FireFox
MSN Messenger
Skype
Autodesk Inventor 9
Autodesk AutoCAD 2004
QCTray.exe
MS Office

AutoCAD and Inventor usually take up enough memory to need swap file but I dont think they would constantly access the drive, neither does AVG. Is your drive always hot? Also, is it just the drive or have you noticed higher temp in your PC in general? If that is the case, maybe your fan is getting dusty, in which case you should clean/replace it immediately as it could cause hardware failure.

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 3:20 am**

stgreek wrote:
Torque wrote: I don't use P2P clients, and don't really have any large programs running resident.

But heres a list of the bigger ones always running:
AVG antivirus
FireFox
MSN Messenger
Skype
Autodesk Inventor 9
Autodesk AutoCAD 2004
QCTray.exe
MS Office
AutoCAD and Inventor usually take up enough memory to need swap file but I dont think they would constantly access the drive, neither does AVG. Is your drive always hot? Also, is it just the drive or have you noticed higher temp in your PC in general? If that is the case, maybe your fan is getting dusty, in which case you should clean/replace it immediately as it could cause hardware failure.

It actually varies quite alot. Right now, the armrest is hot, but not as bad as 20 mins ago. But in general, the drive and palmrest is alot hotter than two days ago.

This is the current status:

Note, that i've just had the TP in standby for a short period.

Are these temps too high?

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 4:01 am**

33 degrees for the HD is quite low, so your HD is not a problem. However, if these temps are at idle, 50C is quite high. Is your fan running? Usually around 40C the fan should start running, in order to keep the temp low. If these temps are at idle, check (basically try to hear) your fan throttling. If these temps are during usage (eg Autocad) they are low, and there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 4:38 am**

stgreek wrote:33 degrees for the HD is quite low, so your HD is not a problem. However, if these temps are at idle, 50C is quite high. Is your fan running? Usually around 40C the fan should start running, in order to keep the temp low. If these temps are at idle, check (basically try to hear) your fan throttling. If these temps are during usage (eg Autocad) they are low, and there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

At the time the screenshot was taken, I was running MS Office Word (two open winows) and a couple of browser windows. So I would think that the temps are measured at idle speed. The fan is running at a very low speed, I guess. I can barely hear it, but when putting my hand in front of the excaust, I can feel the airstream.

I also think that 50C is quite high in idle. Especially when compared to my desktop computer.

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 6:29 am**

I have measured my X31 which was switched on 5 hours ago:

CPU 1.50 GHz
Temp. 67.0 °C
HDD 47.0 °C

The system was in normal use all the time (Outlook, Antivir, Dreamweaver, an hour Photoshop,...) and should have been nearly idle the last 30 minutes (just surfing around during lunch break).

But the armrest is not really hot although the HDD-temperature is higher than yours. You can feel a difference betwenn the right side of the armrest (where the HDD is located on X31-Series) and the left side but you can work comfortable.

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 8:45 am**

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 10:10 am**

Torque those temperatures seem perfectly normal for both CPU and HD.

When I play diablo II my CPU temp goes up to 70 C

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 12:34 pm**

daeojkim wrote:Torque those temperatures seem perfectly normal for both CPU and HD.

When I play diablo II my CPU temp goes up to 70 C

70C is also pretty brutal

My P4 Northwood II has a thermal switch that shuts off at ~74C.

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 12:38 pm**

Batuta wrote:Torque, persistent overheating might damage drive & data.
Get yourself a S.M.A.R.T. program ASAP and then measure the drive's temperature with it.
Should the drive indeed be overheating and suffer damage from this, then the S.M.A.R.T. program will indicate that to you (including a warning period before actual drive failure).
It will also give you an exact reading of the drive's persistent temperature.

Combine that with a CPU motherboard temp control program (chip set dependant!) and you can verify what component really heats up here.

All those progs are available in the PD, but you can also pay for a commercial solution if you like.

Thanks. Have you got any suggestions for the applications you are mentioning? So far, the only monitor i know of for notebooks is mobilemeter http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Oakland/8259/

Peter

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 12:50 pm**

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 12:56 pm**

Batuta wrote:Torque, S.M.A.R.T. is not a specific program, but a self-monitoring, self analyzing HW interface that all modern IDE disks have on-board.
All that a basic S.M.A.R.T. tool really does is to just suck the info out of the drive and dump it onto the screen.
Some of the better ones (like those for OS/2 also format the info and calculate basic values like "time to expected failure" or "time to catastrophic event" out of the data.
S.M.A.R.T. intferfaces are not just very detailed in the info they gove, they also keep a history log of previous failures (not all failures are noticed by the user, often the drive manages to self-correct before the error becomes apparent), that log in turn is analyzed to predict future drive behaviour.
Just google for "S.M.A.R.T. tool download":
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Har ... MART.shtml
http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/be_hdd2.html

Great! Thanks alot for links and info

I'll give them a try, and see if something comes up.

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 2:04 pm**

Ran the Hitachi SMART extended self-test. Completed without error, thank god.

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 2:31 pm**

Torque wrote:
daeojkim wrote:Torque those temperatures seem perfectly normal for both CPU and HD.

When I play diablo II my CPU temp goes up to 70 C
70C is also pretty brutal My P4 Northwood II has a thermal switch that shuts off at ~74C.

P-M has much higher thermal tolerance, I think the throttling starts at 90C

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 3:06 pm**

Batuta wrote:Torque, S.M.A.R.T. is not a specific program, but a self-monitoring, self analyzing HW interface that all modern IDE disks have on-board.
All that a basic S.M.A.R.T. tool really does is to just suck the info out of the drive and dump it onto the screen.
Some of the better ones (like those for OS/2 also format the info and calculate basic values like "time to expected failure" or "time to catastrophic event" out of the data.
S.M.A.R.T. intferfaces are not just very detailed in the info they gove, they also keep a history log of previous failures (not all failures are noticed by the user, often the drive manages to self-correct before the error becomes apparent), that log in turn is analyzed to predict future drive behaviour.
Just google for "S.M.A.R.T. tool download":
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Har ... MART.shtml
http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/be_hdd2.html

In case you haven't been to the Hitachi site lately, they no longer offer the SMART Defender tool for download, saying there's plenty of other programs out there.

Also, I can't get the third link to come up - you sure it's still good?

Rob

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 3:22 pm**

Rob Mayercik wrote:
Batuta wrote:Torque, S.M.A.R.T. is not a specific program, but a self-monitoring, self analyzing HW interface that all modern IDE disks have on-board.
All that a basic S.M.A.R.T. tool really does is to just suck the info out of the drive and dump it onto the screen.
Some of the better ones (like those for OS/2 also format the info and calculate basic values like "time to expected failure" or "time to catastrophic event" out of the data.
S.M.A.R.T. intferfaces are not just very detailed in the info they gove, they also keep a history log of previous failures (not all failures are noticed by the user, often the drive manages to self-correct before the error becomes apparent), that log in turn is analyzed to predict future drive behaviour.
Just google for "S.M.A.R.T. tool download":
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Har ... MART.shtml
http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/be_hdd2.html
In case you haven't been to the Hitachi site lately, they no longer offer the SMART Defender tool for download, saying there's plenty of other programs out there.

Also, I can't get the third link to come up - you sure it's still good?

Rob

I downloaded Hitachi's SMART Defender via the third link. So yes, Batuta's link works.

Heres the direct link to the SMART Defender file:
http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/cgi-bin/oclick.cgi?14

Posted: **Thu Apr 07, 2005 8:52 pm**

Skype is a p2p type program. It is always running in the background.

Posted: **Fri Apr 08, 2005 1:03 am**

dfumento wrote:Skype is a p2p type program. It is always running in the background.

Yes, but Skype rarely (or never) causes disk access. It is however a resource hog: it can use 10-15% CPU and lots of memory at idle. By p2p I meant mostly file-sharing networks, especially bt where you doenload small chunks every time, therefore forcing the drive to continously write (and read, for uploading).

Stavros

Posted: **Fri Apr 08, 2005 12:40 pm**

Torque wrote:I downloaded Hitachi's SMART Defender via the third link. So yes, Batuta's link works.

Heres the direct link to the SMART Defender file:
http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/cgi-bin/oclick.cgi?14

Still can't get it to work from the computer at work. It looks like my corporate firewall may be the culprit. I'll try it from home tonight.

Rob

Posted: **Sun Jul 02, 2006 10:21 am**

Hi guys.

Sorry for pulling out an -old- thread here. Sold my old T41p over a year ago, and got a new T43 2669VVG a couple of days ago.

This thing seems to have the same irritating problem with the palmrest getting hot.

The HDD is ~45C hot at worst, and ~35C when just sitting there. So its not that the HDD is insanely hot. I am just annoyed that the heat is coming through the plastic palmrest, since it IMO makes the machine uncomfortable to use when typing alot.

Is anyone else experiencing this?
Have anyone tried putting a small sheet of thermal foil under the plastic palmrest? I've been thinking about, since it would propably help alot. But I am worried about the HDD not being able to lose the heat generated.

All in all, I think the HDD bay should be ventilated with a direct airstream. Maybe by having a small vent in the side, pulling air in as the main fan generates vacuum.

Posted: **Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:55 am**

I replaced my HD with another HD from Fujitsu and the Fujitsu HD is running a lot hotter.

In the second laptop I've got a Hitachi 5200 rpm HD which is running cooler than its 4200 rpm predecessor.

One thing you can do is to donwload the Intel Application Accelerator and switch your HD to low noise (slower performance) if it is not already. That made in my case the Fujitsu a lot cooler.

btw tempratures range from 33 C to 49 C. And when I run full tilt the 2.6 G CPU then temperature keeps climbing for the CPU until at 78 C it start to get throttled down. The original 1.8 would get with its original fan up to 67 C but after the fan transplant it never got above 56. Have now a (modified) Cooler Master Notepal under the laptop to help matters.

Posted: **Wed Jul 12, 2006 6:00 am**

I had similar experience: the Fujitsu I used to have ran at around 40'C while Hitachi 5K100 runs at 32'C.

Torque, if 35'C is hot for you, then you probably don't want to try X60/s. They average over 45'C on the right palmrest (not because of HDD though).

Posted: **Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:17 am**

sugo wrote:I had similar experience: the Fujitsu I used to have ran at around 40'C while Hitachi 5K100 runs at 32'C.

Torque, if 35'C is hot for you, then you probably don't want to try X60/s. They average over 45'C on the right palmrest (not because of HDD though).

Years ago I saw the light and went IBM. One of the things I liked was having the battery in the front for 1) weight reasons and b) temperature. Sad to see that they have now gone to having the battery at the back.

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