Thinkpads Forum

I'm getting some funny noises from the hard drive upon rebooting. To show you what I mean I made a short video using my cell phone (thus crappy quality):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSpAjDl9NCo

Here's the deal: when I reboot, the power LED (the "Z" in the circle) goes off for couple of seconds. The noises happen during this but only if I reboot, not if shutting down or powering up the notebook.

The laptop is a T60 (see sig.) running a WD Scorpio Black 320GB. I have this drive for over half a year now. I'm not sure if the noises were always there or not but if they weren't, they must have started shortly after I got the drive.

Other than that, the drive runs just great. It is fast and quiet.

Any ideas if this is normal or not and if I should worry about my data?

yak wrote:I'm getting some funny noises from the hard drive upon rebooting. To show you what I mean I made a short video using my cell phone (thus crappy quality):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSpAjDl9NCo

Here's the deal: when I reboot, the power LED (the "Z" in the circle) goes off for couple of seconds. The noises happen during this but only if I reboot, not if shutting down or powering up the notebook.

The laptop is a T60 (see sig.) running a WD Scorpio Black 320GB. I have this drive for over half a year now. I'm not sure if the noises were always there or not but if they weren't, they must have started shortly after I got the drive.

Other than that, the drive runs just great. It is fast and quiet.

Any ideas if this is normal or not and if I should worry about my data?

I did a quick listen to your file, and did not hear anything unusual. (I am also a T60 user, and also use the same drive as you) The power LED thing is simply the machine doing its power on self test during bootup.

Yes, always "worry about your data", and make sure you have backups to another drive. That's just good computer management.

Thanks for reply, that's reassuring.

I'm still not fully convinced as, what I forgot to mention, the noises are somewhat fluctuating. Sometimes they're louder, like a high pitch sound lasting about 0.5s, sometimes they're more like a standard clicks made by some drives.

As I've mentioned in the video description, the noise is louder in real than on the recording.

mgo, do you hear anything at all while rebooting yours?

yak wrote:Thanks for reply, that's reassuring.

I'm still not fully convinced as, what I forgot to mention, the noises are somewhat fluctuating. Sometimes they're louder, like a high pitch sound lasting about 0.5s, sometimes they're more like a standard clicks made by some drives.

As I've mentioned in the video description, the noise is louder in real than on the recording.

mgo, do you hear anything at all while rebooting yours?

I am now running solid state drives on my T60s, so there is zero sound on boot. But, yes, the former mechanical drives did make some normal head noise, as data is read and the combs move around. That is normal. Some drives are a bit noisier than others, depending on brand and other mechanicals.

T60 machines do make some fan noise with occasional short high pitched oscillating sounds. (very irritating to me; so I use TPFancontrol to suppress that) It's possible that is what you are hearing.

mgo wrote:I am now running solid state drives on my T60s, so there is zero sound on boot. But, yes, the former mechanical drives did make some normal head noise, as data is read and the combs move around. That is normal. Some drives are a bit noisier than others, depending on brand and other mechanicals.

T60 machines do make some fan noise with occasional short high pitched oscillating sounds. (very irritating to me; so I use TPFancontrol to suppress that) It's possible that is what you are hearing.

The thing is it's definitely not the same as when the heads move during read/write operations. That is particularly quiet in this drive (have to put my ear to the palmrest to hear the head activity). During normal operation, all I hear is just the platter swoosh.

I'm using TPFanControl too (though not because of high pitched oscillating noises) but the noise I'm talking about comes definitely from the HDD and is much much louder then normal head moving.

yak wrote:the noise I'm talking about comes definitely from the HDD and is much much louder then normal head moving.

Well then, perhaps you are having an emerging hard drive failure problem. In that case, make sure your personal files are backed up, and if you have the software, image that drive so you can avoid lenghthy re-install hassles.

Modern hard drives are pretty good, but they still can fail....even when relatively new.

Right, I'll just keep backing up the data and move on. Thanks for help.