hardrive noise
 

i have a thinkpad t21 800mhz laptop which i use for college work and surfing the net.

it has an ibm djsa 220 harddrive.

sometimes i will hear a noise when the hardrive is access but it sounds a lot louader than normal disk activity

almost like a clunk i was worried that the drive is crashing but now im not so sure as i used speedfan which although on the laptop canot read the temp and fan settings can read the smart status of the drive and its reading drive fitness at 100%

also i have had no bad sectors or problems reading/writing the drive.

this drive is fairly noisy anyway (i can always hear it spinning) so it this noise just the drive seaking to find data or is it dieing?

i know from a old laptop that has a dieing harddisk does make a clunk noise but when it does that it does it repeatedly and would result in a BSD although ive had nothing from this machine doing the same.

just downloaded ibm drive fitness test and gonan run it

Re: hardrive noise
 

I would work on the basis that it may well fail at any moment (ie keep imprtant stuff back up regularly) and be happy for every day / week / month / year that it does not fail :)

Re: hardrive noise
 

hmm no errors on drive fitness test

oh well if it dies it dies i suppose there nothing really important on there i usally keep at least 2 copies of any work i do on computer.

Re: hardrive noise
 

Generally speaking, a clunking noise is very bad coming from a had drive , its way up there with clinks, clanks and the dreaded last clonk :(

Re: hardrive noise
 

:erm: actually it tends to happen when the drive is doing a lot of seeking, im not sure if its the heads coming out of park or whether it actually is crashing


i would have exected the smart status to read lower than 100% if its a dieing drive

also it passed the machanics test on DFT


cus on the old laptop i had that was dieing u heard a clunk hdd would get slowed down and ud hear it spining up back to speed

where as on this one u just here a clunk.

oh well spose if it goes gimme an excuse to buy a 40gb drive wish laptop drives cost the same as their desktop counterparts then id get me a 80gb or larger LOL


Edit im gonna try the firmware update util that the ibm site listed when i went to downloads for that perticular laptop as ive heard some harddrives have a problem with their firmware that makes them clunk

Re: hardrive noise
 

Watch the drive size if its a very old laptop. You may find the bios cant read the disk and laptop bios updates can be hard to get hold of !

Re: hardrive noise
 

hmm i think it should take a 40gb drive and probably more its a p3 800mhz so although its fairly old its not that old

well i would do the drive firmware update app if i could find a floppy that worked ive just had it say diskette error on 4 floppys now :mad:

it does not wanna make the disk for that damn program :sleep:

Re: hardrive noise
 

well i checked it its all up2 date on firmware apperntly some ibm drives do make a loud noise every now and again and this is considerd normall.

i emaled ibm to ask them whether its supposed to make this noise or not.

it does sound a bit like a noise they had recorded on their site for one of the other harddrives .

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs...es/dk23dan.wav

it does sound a bit like that execpt mine u can also hear the drive spinning

Re: hardrive noise
 

Is it like a sort of "clicking" sound?
If so, then this is "normal" - I have an IBM Deskstar 60GB (2 years old and counting!) and apparently it's due to the glass disks heating up then expanding.
When this happens, the head will write the data to the wrong place and the click is when is goes back to write the data again.

Re: hardrive noise
 

hmm that could actaully be it esp as it seems to happen when there is intense disk/cpu activity

e.g copieing a large file

Re: hardrive noise
 

You've done well having a "Deathstar" last that long. :D

Re: hardrive noise
 

Oops, forgot to mention that in my post.
Yeah, try moving a large (100MB+) file from one partition to another - it'll click like mad which scared the hell out of me when I first got the drive! :disturbd:

Re: hardrive noise
 

as its only a 20gb drive i didnt bother partioting it but yeah it does happen when i was copieing a large amount of data


or another thing that tends to make it clunk is if i get into a situation where i got several apps opening and at the same time trying to access the hdd

(i have a tendancy to have a load of apps open)

atm i have firefox, messenger with messenger plus addon, aim, word, outlook, antivirus and firewall running.

and i still got over 64mb ram free LOL not bad considering i had 384mb to start with and its running xp