HD noises inconsistent/not correlated to disk activity

[trentblase]

I just noticed this because I slept next to my X60s for the first time last night. In a normal environment I cannot hear anything (any other equipment in the room will overpower the quiet X60s). However, late at night after my hearing has adjusted with the laptop close to my head, I noticed the following sounds:

Normal hard disk hum for a short interval (10-30 seconds) followed by what sounds like it spinning down to a slower RPM for a short interval (<10 seconds) and then back to the high RPM hum. Random clicks every few seconds (like the head parking).

Note that this is not correlated to HD activity (as measured in performance monitor) -- although there is intermittent activity, it doesn't happen in sync with the sound changes.

I realize that this COULD be a fan spinning up and down, but I'm pretty sure I localized the sound to the HD area. Keeping my hand/ear in front of the fan output, the changes did not seem to be happening in that region.

As a separate issue, I can't seem to do anything to stop HD access. This is new to me, and I'm not sure if it's a WinXP thing, something to do with the Thinkpad software, or something related to other software I have installed. Either way, even after closing all normal programs there is still HD access every few seconds (10-30 seconds). Any suggestions beyond starting to kill taskmanager processes?

Does anyone know if modern hard drives audibly spin up and down like CD drives? (not just stopping and starting but switching between two different speeds)

[archer6]

I just noticed this because I slept next to my X60s for the first time last night.

I attempted to see if mine does that... but the dog was snoring

[MIB]

I just noticed this because I slept next to my X60s for the first time last night. In a normal environment I cannot hear anything (any other equipment in the room will overpower the quiet X60s). However, late at night after my hearing has adjusted with the laptop close to my head, I noticed the following sounds:

Normal hard disk hum for a short interval (10-30 seconds) followed by what sounds like it spinning down to a slower RPM for a short interval (<10 seconds) and then back to the high RPM hum. Random clicks every few seconds (like the head parking).

Note that this is not correlated to HD activity (as measured in performance monitor) -- although there is intermittent activity, it doesn't happen in sync with the sound changes.

I realize that this COULD be a fan spinning up and down, but I'm pretty sure I localized the sound to the HD area. Keeping my hand/ear in front of the fan output, the changes did not seem to be happening in that region.

As a separate issue, I can't seem to do anything to stop HD access. This is new to me, and I'm not sure if it's a WinXP thing, something to do with the Thinkpad software, or something related to other software I have installed. Either way, even after closing all normal programs there is still HD access every few seconds (10-30 seconds). Any suggestions beyond starting to kill taskmanager processes?

Does anyone know if modern hard drives audibly spin up and down like CD drives? (not just stopping and starting but switching between two different speeds)

you can use filemon(freeware) to check up which process is accessing disk, in my case, I find out it is a few thinkadvantage softeware keep writing logs to the HD. I turned it off and now is much better.

[thibouille27]

How do one stop these utilities from writing logs ?

[trentblase]

Holy crap, there's a lot of stuff going on behind my back. I doubt my hard drive will ever spin down.

[MIB]

How do one stop these utilities from writing logs ?

in my case, it is logmon.exe which part of the IBM R&R package wrting logs, I followed some post in the forum to turn off the logging. And the other major HD hogger is logging from the norton firewall stuff, I dont really need it so I turn it off.

[thibouille27]

Thanks.
Well Norton is crap anyway IMO