T60 HDD noise- how noisy is your HDD?

ramian · 09-27-2006, 01:02 AM

NHC has an option to keep the harddrive silent, though I'm not too sure if it's manufacturer dependent. You can also control fan speeds using TPFanControl (which can be found on SourceForge).

cheers!

thinkwierd · 09-28-2006, 08:43 PM

I am pretty it is not the sound from HDD (though I use the same hard drive as the first poster does).

The sound under the right palmrest seems to come from a fan from it. It is not the sound by reading and writing of a hard drive.

ramian · 09-29-2006, 11:07 PM

there is no fan beneath the right palm rest. The only thing there is the HDD.

jackz · 01-07-2007, 01:44 AM

I've got a T60 2007FUG (14" SXGA, C2D 1,8, 1GB, X1400, 80GB, DVD-RW, 9-cell) and while I haven't got any gripes about the fan yet (it's off most of the time, kicks in only every now and then), I'm a tad disappointed by the HDD noise too (must be the HDD since it clearly comes from the right palm rest). Interestingly, it's not seek/write but just the idle noise that's annoying (seek/write is fairly quiet actually). Mine is a Toshiba MK8034GSX.

Now as far as AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) is concerned, NHC shows this option blanked out. I looked around a bit and it seems that Toshiba drives may not support AAM at all (didn't find any clear info on the MK8034GSX though).

Has anyone experience in silencing these Toshiba drives?

Kevin O'Brien · 01-07-2007, 02:27 AM

The noise from the T60 has something to do with the cavity that the drive sits inside. It almost acts like an echo chamber of sorts. In another laptop I had a very quiet Seagate drive that was almost inaudible, but when placed in the T60 drive bay, made the same whirring sound.

This is my reasoning. In all the laptops I have played with that didn't have this sound, they had a ton of plastic on top of the drive area. Be it a keyboard, or some other hulk of thick palm rest. The T60 on the other hand has a wafer thin section of frame covering the bay, and then about 1-2mm of the plastic/carbon fiber palm rest. Nothing above or around the drive is able to absorb the sound, or shield it from coming out the top.

jackz · 01-07-2007, 12:38 PM

There isn't any space to fit any dampening material in between the drive and the cage or something like that I guess?

yongren · 01-07-2007, 02:23 PM

A certain volume of atmospheric space has to envelope the HD so that air can circulate freely over it.

I have exactly the same continuous, mild wind-through-pine-needles sound coming from the right side of my palmrest. 80 GB drive, although I haven't checked to see what make it is. Only noticeable in acoustical surroundings where working really close to a lot of planar reflections in the corner of a very quiet room (desks, stacked books, monitors, intersecting walls.

It's the price of power.