VAIO A 197 > weird HD ticking sound

[srsconsulting]

Dear VAIO friends,

From the beginning on my VAIO is making a weird 'ticking' background sound coming from the Hard Disk.

Besides the normal/usual low noise hard-disk sound sometimes there is an extra ticking sound, which I think is coming from the hard disk. The sound can be heard in intervals when the hard-disk is working hard during start-up and program launch.

I have to say that it doesn't feel like the HD it's stuck, but I also don't think it is normal.

Any experience with this issue fom other A 117 or A 197 users?

Cheers,

Gerald

[TygerTyger]

Is the noise louder than usual? Have you noticed the hard drive seems to be slower than when your computer first arrived? These symptoms usually accompany the noise and mean that the hard drive is a little dodgy. It may well work fine for a long time, but if you can I'd get Sony to replace it now as opposed to waiting for it to go 'phut' on you sometime in the future.

[kee-lo_]

A lot of people have mentioned this, so I think it's a feature rather than a defect

[TygerTyger]

I thought that was a small tick after data access?

[kee-lo_]

Yeah there's that too, but the hard disk in that model parks a lot too.

[srsconsulting]

Thanx for your help!

Indeed I found out that this is a common fact for the Hitachi hard-disks. Not only the Sony Vaio has this hard disk but also sevral Dell and Compaq laptops have them.

The sound is due to agressive power saving settings that parks the hard disk a lot.

As I learned this is very safe for the hard disk (so it can't crash the needle) as it is build for mobile purposes.

So summarized, I'll learn to live with it, as the VAIO is a wonderfull machine.

Cheers,

Gerald

[kee-lo_]

No problem.

[feederfan]

This is probably irrelevant, but this can also happen if your hard drive needs defragmenting, as the needle has to travel all over the disk to read data, it is nosier. Maybe a defrag is worth tryin to see if it helps. Ive never noticed this noise on my K series Vaio Notebook

[kee-lo_]

Defragging is always good anyway