Quieter Hard Drive options for T42

[dimon]

Dimon
I presume that the clicks you refer to are the sound of the heads moving.
Have you set the drives to optimise for quietness rather than speed?
David

I used Centrino Hardware Control to set Accoustics Management to quiet. Not sure whether this info is picked up by HDD. If you know of any other way, please let me know.

Again, Fujitsu is pretty good. May be even further step would be to use 1.8" 4200 drive, not sure if it will fit in T42.

BTW, I live in Seattle, funny that we have the same quest while living in same region.

[sugo]

Automatic Acoustic Management is a standard implemented by most HDDs nowadays. Typically AAM reduces seek acoustic noise by slowing down seek speed. There are a few utilities out there that can change the AAM setting.

An 1.8" HDD with old technology (first generation Toshiba?) can easily be noiser than a 5k100.

[energyandair]

Dimon wrote:

I used Centrino Hardware Control to set Accoustics Management to quiet. Not sure whether this info is picked up by HDD. If you know of any other way, please let me know.

I used ATITool and it seemed to make a significant difference. The only HD noise that I really notice now is the rotational noise. I guess the response might be different with different HDs.
As Thinkpads tend to have better than average reviews on noise, there is probably some preselection going and buyers who want silence are more likely to pay extra for a TP than others who don't care. I also suspect that a lot of people would like their laptops to be quieter but find the TP tolerable and aren't bothered enough to make a big effort, lose speed or spend much extra money to achieve quieter performance. I'm not sure if there is regional factor though!

[teepee]

I did a LOT of reading around for quiet laptop HDDs and the two that came out ahead are the Fujitsu MHT2040AT as the most quiet, and the Samsung MP0402H as being almost exactly as quiet but much faster. I think there is a comaprison at Silent PC Review.

Hope this helps