Centrino Hardware Control and hard drive noise?

[louise]

I just purchased a used (refurbed?) X40 through ebay. All is fine except the clicking, or ticking of the hard drive is very difficult to deal with.

I was looking at the Centrino Hardware control site http://www.pbus-167.com/chc.htm.

It talks about adjusting fan noise - but it also says: "control and monitor the Hard Drive with S.M.A.R.T management, acoustic & advanced power management and Hard Drive temperature monitoring."

Would this lower the volume of the clicking? Does turning off the hard drive drop protection change the clicking at all?

TIA

Louise

[dorin]

unfortunatelly the 1.8" hdd in the x40 dosent have acoustic control!

you'll have to live with the clicking noise! i was lucky cause the old hdd had some errors and i;ve got a silent one now, check my other posts, the one with cache and clicking.

have a nice day,

dorin

[louise]

So - is it a fact that the clicking cannot be modified or stopped on the x40?

If so.....I'm looking for a notebook under 3.5 lbs. that doesn't have a clicking hard drive. I would like a good amount of processing power since I often use speech recognition software.

I wish the x40 had a regular 2.5 hard drive because I'd then replace it with a Samsung Spinpoint - I run one of those in my desktop and it's practically silent.

And....I want a FULL size keyboard - not what passes for a "standard" size keyboard.

Is there such a machine out there?

Or is there any way to shut this thing up? Would sending it back to IBM make any real difference? It doesn't whine particularly, and the fan seems well behaved - but the clicking...... Any way to stop it from parking its heads, if indeed, that is the cause?

Thanks.

Louise

[shinjiplus]

i too am having this annoying harddrive clicking on my new X41!

constant clicking every 1 or 1.5 seconds and there's nothing i can do to stop it either. is it a problem with the drive (as dorin got a new one that is silent)? are the same X41T issues in the sticky applicable to the X41/X40?

[louise]

After reading through the x41 posts, it sounds like it is a "feature" of the Hitachi drives to park their heads every few seconds.

I can't do anything now because it is back at IBM having the screen replaced (defect with two small blotches) but it is under warranty and they have the defect already documented so they were willing to replace it.

When it comes back I'm going to try it out for a while and see how bad and frequent the clicking really is. I will also run the Hitachi test and the other test mentioned in the X41 forum. If I find any problems, I'll definitely try to get a new drive.

In either case, I plan to call IBM and talk with them about it. My hunch is that it is the nature of the drive - but if it proves faulty later, I want it on record that I complained NOW as I only have one year left on the warranty (I bought it from ebay).

Louise