Thinkpads Forum

The noise level is very noticeable in a quiet room which I sit in. It is okay when I have to do brief jobs on the laptop - but when I work on my papers, books or scratches I still hear the harddrive access noise (yes the green light is flashing periodically) which makes it more difficult to concentrate. Why would that be ever happening at all? I mean, it is *totally* idle.

Thanks.

The hard drive will never be totally idle, but I see my hard drive light out (idle) for fairly long periods at a time. I suspect you have a process running that uses the hard disk all the time. I recall that IM kept my hard drive busy with a conflict with Symantec Corporate (two ThinkPads ago). I disable IM and don't have issues just now.
... JD Hurst

Thank you!

It seems that Windows Live Messenger (beta) I recently upgraded to was causing the problem. So I shut it down and the seeking noise is gone. MSN Messenger 7.5 did not have this issue, though.

jdhurst wrote:The hard drive will never be totally idle, but I see my hard drive light out (idle) for fairly long periods at a time. I suspect you have a process running that uses the hard disk all the time. I recall that IM kept my hard drive busy with a conflict with Symantec Corporate (two ThinkPads ago). I disable IM and don't have issues just now.
... JD Hurst

You can monitor file activity with this free utility: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html It tells you what file is being accessed, and which program is doing it.

You can also enable Acoustic Management on your hard drive. It's VERY effective at making your Hitachi drive whisper quiet. See this thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... t=acoustic

Only change the acoustic level. Do not change the power management or any other settings, or you might kill your drive.

RonS wrote: Only change the acoustic level. Do not change the power management or any other settings, or you might kill your drive.

How can you kill your drive that way?

shadowlight wrote:How can you kill your drive that way?

A previous poster posted about this. He changed the APM setting and the hard drive would no longer respond. Couldn't boot or anything.

Hitachi have acknowledged it as a 'bug'.