Thinkpads Forum

My first T60's Toshiba MK6034GSX 60GB HD is very quiet, almost inaudible, but the T60 and T61 I just bought (used) and configured with larger HDs (running XP Pro and Windows 7 64bit Ultimate, respectively) have pretty annoying HD noise (white noise, like freeway noise only higher pitched). They are respectively a Seagate ST9250827AS 250GB 5400RPM and a Samsung HM640JJ 640GB 7200RPM. The Seagate is very noticeable, and the 7200RPM Samsung significantly more so.

The noise issues I have with my first Thinkpad T60 are fan related (I think I can probably quiet it down some with deft use of Arctic Silver 5), but with the newly acquired machines it's largely attributable to the hard drives. Can these Thinkpads be configured to spin down the HD when the machine is idle?

It's funny, I never used to hear the hard drives in my machines, but now since I've switched to SSDs, I hear every one. Big or small laptop, even the drives that are supposed to quiet. I'd say if you want quite a SSD is the way to go, but that offers a high price and limited capacity.

I believe that both XP and W7 have built-in idle timers for the disk drive in the Power Manager utility. Likewise, if you have the Lenovo Power Management program loaded in the system, you'll find the timer there as well.

rkawakami wrote:I believe that both XP and W7 have built-in idle timers for the disk drive in the Power Manager utility. Likewise, if you have the Lenovo Power Management program loaded in the system, you'll find the timer there as well.

Thanks. I looked pretty hard for it today and couldn't find it. I looked in both places.

Edit: Guess I found it, Control Panel / System and Security / Power Options / Edit Plan Settings / Change Advanced Power Settings / Hard Disk / Turn off Hard Disk After / On Battery/Plugged In

I changed them both to 3 minutes and will see how I like it.

My having made the adjustment seems to have had no effect. The HD has not turned off under any circumstances, even after reboots.

Muse wrote:My having made the adjustment seems to have had no effect. The HD has not turned off under any circumstances, even after reboots.

To shutdown the HDD, you should use software that can read-write some parameters stored in the HDD itself.
One of such software is Notebook Hardware Control. Once installed it, go to Hard Disk tab and set Advanced Power Control to "Enable Spin Down".

However, turn down the HDD is not very effective in practice, because even in idle mode, Windows frequently read - write data on hard drive.

Binh wrote: (spindown of the ) HDD is not very effective in practice, because even in idle mode, Windows frequently read - write data on hard drive.

I suppose I'll get used to it. The HDs are progressively louder the bigger they get, mine are, that is. The biggest is going to be in my kitchen, where it will get drowned out by the refrigerator at least 1/2 the time. I should be thankful for small favors. The fridge makes 10 times the noise.