Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

Recently I have noticed that there is a relatively loud Choke sound during intensive HDD/SDD operations, like disk check. Is it normal for X220? Like this:

https://sndup.net/54ty/Choke+Sound+Duri ... +Check.mp3
https://sndup.net/54ty

Hard disk click?
It's the click of death. ie: your hard disk is dying.

Immediately perform data backup (we normally do 2 backups for such situations).

Then do not use your old hard drive anymore.

Should you still wish to use your existing ThinkPad X220, then you need to obtain replacement hard drive or SSD, then do Product Recovery on it.

Good luck!

There shouldn't be any loud sounds. I can't hear it on your recording but most likely it's the drive repeatedly trying to read a bad sector, and if it has some, often more will appear soon. So, first of all, as @w0qj says, make a backup of your files. Then, if you want to know how bad things are you can run chkdsk c: /r or another tool to do a full surface scan (backup first though) but if I were you I'd just use this opportunity to upgrade to an SSD since they're cheap enough these days and the performance gain is well worth it.

Hi, there are many possible causes, a hard drive clicking noise often results from the defective movement of the disk's read-write actuator. During regular use, a disk head moves smoothly to track data on a disk. In older hard drives, the clicking noise is usually related to a problem with the disk head. The possible cause of clicking can be physical damage to hard drive, insufficient power, glitch PCB, read write head misalignment etc. But here I will suggest take a backup of your drive otherwise you may have to face data loss situation. Although, you can recover the data via some free tools: recuva, stellar data recovery, testdisk etc. But prevention is better than cure.

I have SSD on my X220 and it is not clicking, it is high pitch noise, like a mosquito or an old TV set (when the speakers are off). You can hear this kind of noise on some bad quality videocards and it is produced by chokes on PSB.

GOOD to hear that your Product Recovery / data transfer to your X220 went smoothly!

SSD does breathe new life into your computer--our own X230 had a new lease of life after SSD installation.

BTW, max out your RAM in your X220 if possible.
Using up all your physical RAM, then forcing Windows to use Swap File (write "RAM" into your SSD) causes unnecessary wear & tear to your SSD!
We noticed that even 8 GB RAM can be all physically used up if you open too many tabs on your browser nowadays, especially if you have other programs open at the same time!