T60 HDD noise- how noisy is your HDD?

[badreligion]

I hear a quiet but constant "whirring" noise coming from the right bottom corner of my T60 (2623-DRU). I called the IBM tech support and they sent me a replacement drive but it had the same noise again. This time I sent the machine in for repair and they replaced the system board. I have just received the notebook and the noise is still there.

My question is: how noisy is your HDD? Mine (80 GB Toshiba) is not terribly loud but certainly audible in a quiet environment. With a new system board and new HDD, I think the chances of a failing hardware component is very low. I am also confident that there are no processes that are trying to access the HDD. Might this be just the "normal" operational noise of this machine? If so, I would be rather disappointed, since even the crappy dell of my wife is quiter than my T60.

On an additional note, my T60 also has the "fan always on" issue, but after spending hours with power manager, tpcanfontrol and NHC as well as sending the machine in for repair (before I sent it for the HDD issue) I pretty much gave up the hope of getting rid of the fan problem.

Any suggestion would be very much appreciated.

[rosemarycane]

Hey,
Have not had any issue with my fan, but my T43 sure did. It seems to be random as to those Thinkpad users who have fan trouble and those who don't.

As for the hard drive, you should hear some sound as disk caching is enabled, but it should not be that loud. I had trouble with my original drive. It was a Fujitsu, and when it parked the heads, I could hear a loud "click". Now that I have a Hitachi, the sound is gone. Try downloading the drive fitness test from the Hitachi website:

http://www.hitachigst.com/warranty/jsp/arma22h.jsp

Check the drive and see what you get. You will need to create a bootable floppy or CD for this program to work. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you. I sent in my T43 several times for the fan problem, but it was never rectified. One solution might be to put arctic silver 5 on the cpu and gpu to lower the temp. Also might try a laptop chill mat like the one made by targus.

Hope some of this information helps!

[rosemarycane]

Hey,
Have not had any issue with my fan, but my T43 sure did. It seems to be random as to those Thinkpad users who have fan trouble and those who don't.

As for the hard drive, you should hear some sound as disk caching is enabled, but it should not be that loud. I had trouble with my original drive. It was a Fujitsu, and when it parked the heads, I could hear a loud "click". Now that I have a Hitachi, the sound is gone. Try downloading the drive fitness test from the Hitachi website:

http://www.hitachigst.com/warranty/jsp/arma22h.jsp

Check the drive and see what you get. You will need to create a bootable floppy or CD for this program to work. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you. I sent in my T43 several times for the fan problem, but it was never rectified. One solution might be to put arctic silver 5 on the cpu and gpu to lower the temp. Also might try a laptop chill mat like the one made by targus.

Hope some of this information helps!

[rosemarycane]

Hey,
Have not had any issue with my fan, but my T43 sure did. It seems to be random as to those Thinkpad users who have fan trouble and those who don't.

As for the hard drive, you should hear some sound as disk caching is enabled, but it should not be that loud. I had trouble with my original drive. It was a Fujitsu, and when it parked the heads, I could hear a loud "click". Now that I have a Hitachi, the sound is gone. Try downloading the drive fitness test from the Hitachi website:

http://www.hitachigst.com/warranty/jsp/arma22h.jsp

Check the drive and see what you get. You will need to create a bootable floppy or CD for this program to work. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you. I sent in my T43 several times for the fan problem, but it was never rectified. One solution might be to put arctic silver 5 on the cpu and gpu to lower the temp. Also might try a laptop chill mat like the one made by targus.

Hope some of this information helps!

[briansmith]

FWIW, the new 100GB 7k100 I put in my T60 is much louder than the 100GB 5k100 that was originally installed in it. The 5k100 hardly made a sound, whereas the 7k100 gives a grinding sound every time it is accessed.

[WirelessAndy]

When I first bought a T60, I also noticed HD noise as well. It was a gentle, constant "whooshing" sound on all the time.

I had Lenovo send me a replacement drive of a different brand. No luck. Still whoosh-y.

At the same time, I installed a new Hitachi Travelstar 5K-series.

Fujitsu (originally shipped HD): whoosh-y
Toshiba (Lenovo replacement): whoosh-y
Hitachi (mine, brand new): less whoosh-y but still noticable

I have an older PATA version of the same Travelstar in my old Dell, and it's nearly inaudible even in a silent room.

Of course, this is all subjective. My friend thinks his T60 is 100% silent and thinks I'm 100% nuts. I borrowed his T60 and brought it into a quiet room. It also sounded exactly like my T60, which I ended up returning.

My initial conclusion is either the Thinkpads permit slightly more radiated noise vs. my old Dell Latitude D600, or my old Travelstar is a freak of nature (albeit silent!)

I am a little curious if installing the HD in the Ultrabay slot make it any quieter...? Anyone try? I did this on my Dell, and I swear it SEEMS quieter... Definitely cooler.

[FlexOink]

I have a 100GB 7200rpm disk. And yes I can hear some clicky sounds when it is accessing the disk. But it doesnt bother me at all, because they are really quiet compared to other disks I am used to (Hitachi travelstar 40Gb 5400 rpm PATA). Plus I work next to a loud server, and my music is on most of the time.

Sometimes during meetings I do wish it was a bit less loud, cuz when its really quiet in a room, you can hear it spinning.

But all the sounds the harddisk produces are nothing compared to what the fan produces. You can hear the fan over any harddisk sound.

What bothers me more is the vibrations that come from this device. I can clearly feel when its spinning, and when its not. And when your hand is on the palmrest, its tiresome to feel the vibration all the time.

Isnt there a program that can make a 7200rpm disk run 5400rpm? that be great for the battery and the vibrations.

[jon]

The hard drive in my X60s is also quite whooshy and vibey. It's probably the worst 2.5-inch drive I've ever heard. Louder than the fan. Can't be bothered to return it now though, and it's only the on/off sounds (like fans) that tend to disturb me.

A "quiet but constant whirring noise" sounds totally normal. I'm surprised you got a new system board for that.

[romka]

i have the hitachi

i can honestly say that i can't hear it

[amo]

Hi,

I was hearing the clicking a lot on my brand new T60p 2007-86U, and installed the Hitachi tool after searching on this forum, and it solved the problem. now it is just a "normal" HDD noise.

Thanks for the good tip.

best,
Amaury

[badreligion]

I tried the Hitachi tool on my Toshiba drive. It did recognize the drive, but said the acoustic management feature was not supported.

I did read that the tool worked rather well for the Hitachi drives though.

[ennma]

whoosy is all i got , but mine is pretty loud + with the fan, it kindda loud, wish I had know would have gone with lower specs

[wolfman]

The T60 I was just issued from work has a very quiet drive, it's a 5400 RPM and I can't hear it at all, particularly compared to the Hitachi 7200 RPM in my R40.

I'm very happy with the T60. I was very curious to see if the quality had changed at all and I don't think it really has at all. I volunteered to "try out" the Thinkpad as we are switching back to them from Dell's. Goodbye Dell Latitude can't say I'll miss ya...hehehe

[nxman]

My 80 Gig 5400 Rpm is noisy

[pvetch]

My t60p is quiet. The fan is on all the time (2.33GHz so I guess that figures) but the hard drive is nicely muted. The overall package is I'd say slightly quieter than my T42p. Hard disk is definitely quieter in the T60p (despite the fact they're identical 100Gb 7200rpm units).

[archer6]

I have a T60 with the 100GB 5400 rpm drive and a T60p with the 100GB 7200 rpm drive. While these drives can be heard I would not call them loud or even bothersome. Far less noisey than my T43p. In addition, taking into consideration the huge bump in performance I'm happy to report that I find nothing objectionable. It's also important to note that I tend to be very picky and somewhat of a perfectionist. I would be the first to complain if these were loud.

Regarding fan noise, again I can hear the fan and that's the good news (it's working as it should). A far better scenario than an overheated computer. Check out the reports and reviews on other makes of Core Duo laptops and heat expelled by the processor is handled better on a ThinkPad than all the rest.

There will always be compromises with laptops that are being designed to be as thin and light as possible while housing very powerful processors whose by product will always be heat. It's my personal experience that ThinkPads are a far superior product to the others.

[NS]

Well, I used a 100GB Western Digital on my T60 and things began to work well. No sound, no complains. As on my R52, I used a 100GB Samsung and no loud whirring sound but there is an occasional "braking" sound & it is only visible when you placed your ear on the right palm rest.

Note: My T60 HDD is 7200RPM; while my R52 HDD is 5400RPM...!:D

@Archer6,
you've got so many thinkpads...! Wow!!! You can open a thinkpad museum...

[archer6]

Well, I used a 100GB Western Digital on my T60 and things began to work well. No sound, no complains. As on my R52, I used a 100GB Samsung and no loud whirring sound but there is an occasional "braking" sound & it is only visible when you placed your ear on the right palm rest.

It's good to hear your positive experience and feedback on these drives.

@Archer6,
you've got so many thinkpads...! Wow!!! You can open a thinkpad museum...

And to think that I love museums....

[wallybear]

My 2623-D6U shipped with the 5400rpm 80GB drive. It is almost entirely silent (so quiet that when I first started the machine I was impressed with the lack of drive noise). Also, the system fan seems to rarely operate and is relatively quiet when it does.

I bought an Advanced Dock to use with my T60 (Lenovo had a great price for a short time: $253). I decided I wanted to have a hard drive in the "Enhanced" Media Bay of the Dock. So, I bought a SATA drive adapater (cost $43 from Lenovo). This adpater will also work in the T60's "Slim" Media Bay.

I then bought a 7200rpm 80GB Hitachi 7K series drive to "match" the original in size. I debated the cost of the various options ($125 for the 80GB 7200, $75 for an 80GB 5400, $170 for a 100GB 7200, $100 for a 100GB 5400, $130 for a 120GB 5400). I only considered Hitachi drives (not Seagate or Fujitsu, etc.) because of their reputation (I had read all the reviews I could find) and because of the near-silent operation of the 5400rpm drive that shipped in my T60.

I finally decided that I would most value some extra speed, rather than space, because I know the main "bottleneck" in terms of performance in any notebook computer is the hard drive. In fact, it seems rather silly for pay for a fast CPU and plenty of RAM but then be hobbled by a "slow" HDD. My plan was to put the 7200 HDD in the T60's internal bay and then move the old 5400 HDD to the SATA drive adapter for use in the Media Bay of the T60 or the Advanced Dock.

After lots of soul-searching, I decided the best bang-for-the-buck from my point of view was the 80GB 7200 drive. Also, because I wanted to "clone" the original 5400 drive (I had spent many hours configuring it), I decided that having a disk of the same exact size (cylinders, sectors, etc.) would be best way to go.

I used the "BackItUp" program in the Nero 7 Enhanced Suite to do the cloning. I made a full disk backup (sector by sector) to an external 300GB Maxtor One Touch III drive (which is my primary backup drive). I then restored the backup to the new 7200rpm drive. Then, I edited the "Boot.ini" file to tell Windows that there were two bootable disks in the machine (and which was which). This step avoided the problem that others have mentioned on this forum of Windows thinking it has 2 "C:" drives after a cloning is done.

Now, with all that background explained, here are the details I think all you folk most want to know:

-> The 7200rpm drive is definitely (a bit) louder than the 5400rpm drive. The faster drive makes more of a "whooshing" sound than the slower drive (sort of like the sound of the DVD drive spinning). I immediately noticed that the sound level was increased (as I said, a bit) over the original drive, but I want to STRESS that the sound is still very low and totally acceptable to me. The faster drive makes no clicking sounds nor does it vibrate more, it just makes a louder "whooshing" sound (obviously because it is spinning 33% faster....there is that little thing we call Physics to deal with here).

-> Drive performance tests (using HDTech) showed that my subjective experience that the machine suddenly "got faster" were true. The average MB-per-second transfer rate of the 5400rpm dirve was 34MB. The 7200rpm drive increased that by a third to 45MB. I got the same results whether the drives were in the Media Bay or the internal bay. The machine boots in about 1/3 less time and it launches applications and displays Start Menu items in much less time, too.

So, I am as happy as a T60 user can be with this upgrade. Although my machine is "only" a 1.83GHz Core Duo with 1GB of RAM, the faster HDD made a significant (to me) difference at the cost of $50 more (over the same-sized 5400rpm drive) and a bit more operating noise (the "whooshing" sound I described).

Not a bad result, I think, for a Saturday afternoon's work.

[WirelessAndy]

The average MB-per-second transfer rate of the 5400rpm dirve was 34MB. The 7200rpm drive increased that by a third to 45MB. I got the same results whether the drives were in the Media Bay or the internal bay.

Finally! Someone actually tested the HD in the Media Bay. Glad to hear there's no perceptible speed difference/penalty.

Any thoughts on if an HD in the T60's Media Bay/Ultrabay/Whatever-it's-called-Bay is any quieter than in the "normal" slot?

I'm a real noise Nit Picker, so any improvement is a real bonus.

Not a bad result, I think, for a Saturday afternoon's work.

I agree. Well done Wally!

[wallybear]

First, I want to say that I didn't intentionally post the same reply three times. There's some issue with the forum that's causing these duplicate postings. MOD EDIT - fixed, duplicates deleted

Second, I will answer the last question:

Whether I have either drive in either bay (internal or Ultrabay) the drive sounds the same. That is, in the course of my transition work, I had the 7200rpm drive in the Ultrabay and in the internal bay. I also had the 5400 drive in both bays. The sound in either place was consistent with the drive's speed (that is, the 7200 is always a bit louder with its spinning noise).

Also, I have put both HDDs in the Ultrabay Enhanced Media Bay in the Advanced Dock. The drive noise in both cases was lessened when in this bay. This is probably because the noise of the fan that cools the power supply in the dock is louder than either drive.

I hope this is the information you were looking for. If not, please clarify your concerns and I'll try to answer.