HDD clicking every few seconds on idle -- how to stop it?

[hirst60]

Hi All,

I'm a new and mostly satisfied user of an X220. It's a great little machine. However, I've noticed it produces a fairly loud and distracting audible click approximately every 5 seconds when it is idle under low load. This is apparently a fairly common problem for hard drives although it is new to me. My T60 did not do this.

After looking around a bit, one popular solution is to use some third party software to turn off the AAM (automatic acoustic management) feature built into the Hitachi hard drive. Has anybody else done this and can they report how effective it was? Which software utility did you use?

Another possible solution I found was to reduce the Lenovo shock sensitivity settings for the hard drive.

Just wondering what my choices are here at this point.

Thanks!

[steveg47]

The drive in my x220 is a 320gb 7200rpm Seagate and has been absolutely quiet since delivery about 6 weeks ago. You might want to consider calling Lenovo support and see if this is normal for your drive. If it isn't they will most likely send you a new drive.

[hirst60]

Interesting that you got a Seagate and I got a Hitachi. And we ordered them around the same time -- I ordered mine at the beginning of April.

Thanks for the suggestion -- always good advice to put in a call and see what they say about it. I do find that the Hitachi hard drive is noisier than the one in my old T60. Not just the chinese water torture clicks, but the higher pitched whine is also more noticeable in a quiet room.