Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

I own a Thinkpad T61 7660-RPG (bought in June 2008) and for about 2/3 months, it produces a loudy noise from time to time; the noise sounds like the hard-drive was heavily reading/writing data but actually this is not the hard drive (there is no drive activity when the sound occurs).

Does someone had such issue ?

Thanks a lot.

There are (3) moving parts in a T61 ... an optical drive, a hard drive, and a fan. If you remove the optical drive from it's bay and the noise still occurs, then it's the hard drive or the fan. It sounds like you've eliminated one of those so ...

I'd bet it's the fan. My company has many T60 and T61 laptops and they often get their heat sinks clogged and their fans encrusted with dust and lint.

You'll need to remove the keyboard to get clear access to the fan and a can of air duster.

I do not let the air duster freely spin the fan - I hold it in place when blasting. I recommend blasting from the inside out first, using short bursts of air. Then blast outside in, checking for lint caught in the blades of the fan. A bright flashlight and some narrow toothpicks or straightened paper clips can be useful for getting lint out.

Repeat blasting process.

I've found that all dual core laptops, regardless of maker, seem to have this problem as the heatsink blades are much closer together as compared to the T40x series.