E6500 hard drive noise

I just bought a Latitude E6500. Mostly a well built and well equipped notebook I think (poor audio and the fan runs a bit too much though).

My main problem with it is that the hard disk makes a constant noise that I find very annoying at low ambient noise levels. It's not seeks - it's almost constant. At first I thought it was the main fan running at low speed. But I can see through the vent below that the noise is there even when the fan is not moving (and i8kfangui31 reports that the fan is not active). The noise almost resembles the fan running at low speed, but is somewhat lower (less noisy). And the noise comes from the disk corner of the notebook. There is disk activity every other second even when no programs are running, so the disk never goes to sleep. Setting the BIOS (A11) HDD acoustic mode to "Quiet" doesn't help.

The disk is a 5400 RPM 250 GB Scorpio Blue (WD2500BEVT). I picked the 5400 RPM version to get a low noise setup, and this is definitely not what I expected. It is much more noisy than the 40 GB Toshiba drive in my old trusted Tecra notebook and a 2.5' Hitachi drive in an enclosure. It makes considerably more noise than my two WD Caviar 500 GB desktop drives in enclosures.

The drive is properly secured and it doesn't cause any noticeable vibration. I have seen other reports of noisy disks in E6500s/E6400s, but that have been 7200 RPM disks and therefore less surprising. DELL has made no effort to insulate the drive from the rest of the case. Some have reported slight improvements in noise level by adding tape or paper as padding. But I'm afraid slight improvements will not do for me. If the disks in the E6500 really makes this much noise, I'll have to send the notebook back and look elsewhere.

I may have got a bad drive and a new one might solve the problem. But due to the return deadline I don't really have time to try that (I will be stuck with the notebook if the new drive doesn't solve the problem).

Grateful for any ideas or experiences.

 

You have evidently read my comments and fixes for the HDD noise being transmitted to the chassis.

Did you try enabling the acoustic management in the BIOS? If that doesn't fix the problem then you can ask Dell for a replacement HDD. This may be a different brand, but there's no guarantee.

John

 

Thanks for your suggestions John. Yes, I have tried altering the BIOS ("Setting the BIOS (A11) HDD acoustic mode to "Quiet" doesn't help").

I have read your and a couple of others comments about disk noise. Doing a lot of writing (and thinking) in quite surroundings, I'm dependent on a reasonably quiet notebook to be able to concentrate.

What I would like comments on is whether the disks in peoples E6500/E6400 are reasonably quiet or if my sample is representative (i.e. what the chances are that a new disk may solve the problem). Unfortunately I don't have a 2.5" external SATA enclosure to test the drive in.

 

My E6400 came with a Samsung HM160HI which was acceptably quiet (the Samsung HDDs usually are). I replaced it with a Fujitsu MHZ2320BH which was noticeably noisier and this, in turn, has been replaced with a WD5000BEVT which is also acceptably quiet (there's some purring and ticking but no loud noises). The WD website gives identical acoustic specifications for both the WD2500BEVT and the WD5000BEVT (everything looks the same except the capacity). The purring is similar to the noise of a fan running slowly. Unless yours is abnormally noisy, I think you will be lucky to get a HDD which is quieter.

As for the HDD activity, it may be Vista's indexing and SuperFetch at work (if you have Vista) but, with XP and no indexing, I never see the HDD stop running - too many background processes accessing it.

I suggest you give the HDD a day or two. It's the new noise that is distracting, not the noise itself. Once it becomes familiar then it is far less noticeable. I agree that Dell should have given more attention to the mounting of the HDD. However, this might have resulted in a thicker chassis.

John

 

I just got a new E6500 as well and I just noticed this very annoying behavior. But the more troubling question is what process is doing this? it can't be a very good thing for the longevity of the hard drive.

I recently installed cygwin and thought the it was perhaps the culprit, but no cygwin processes are running. The most active process when the machine is idle seems to be BcmDeviceAndTaskStatusService.exe, so I wonder if that is the one responsible for the disk activity every second or so. That process seems to have a memory leak too.

 

Try running the hard drive tests in the Diagnostics.

 

If I recall correctly, WD2500BEVT has twoplatters. That makes it more noisy than disks with one platter. If you want a silent hard drive you should look for one with one platter.

I have an 7200 RPM 160 GB Hitachi drive with one platter and it is quiet for a 7200 RPM drive.

Örjan

 

My 1 platter, 2 head, 160GB Seagate 7200RPM HDD is dead quiet. Controller is SATA AHCI with very minimal disk activity.

GK