Caution: Watch out for tick-tick-tick sound from Thinkpad T60/T61/X61/???

I believe all models are having this problem, not sure what is fix is for this serious flaw.

As many had seen over and over again, this horrible TICK sound still exists on newer laptops as well.

T61
X61
T60
X60

A flawed design screwed in these laptops. I am using a older T41 and it runs ultra quiet without any issues.

I don't know what's going on. Many say it's the hard drive, I am not sure if it's the hard drive or something else.

Anybody has any clue, please post. I am getting sick of this constant tick tick sound from the laptop.

Thanks.

 

What side is sound comming from and which Lenovo do you have?

 

It's a T60, 6371-E5U. I have a fun poll going above chk it out as well.

The sound is sure enough coming from hard drive side. I have several hard drives, I am not sure if they all make the same sound. I would bet they do since I vaguely remember this problem about two months ago.

thx for responding.

 

Awesome! I have 100% of the votes right now!

 

I have a T61 and it's solidly quiet...but if I knew that the HDD would certainly make a tick noise, I would not purchase it.

 

Mine was quite too when I purchased brand new from Lenovo on Mar 21st 2007. The problem started happening if you keep it running for a long time about 6 - 8 hrs for couple of months I guess.

I saw this happen first time in Oct, due to lack of interest left it unattended. Now that I have some spare time, I am going to call Lenovo and check it out since it's still under warranty till March.

Thanks for the poll.. this is going to go a long way.

 

Ok, so you have the 120G 5400RPM drive. Maybe you got a bad drive. Run the Diags for the hard drive in BIOS under "HDD Diagnostic" and select main/primary hdd.

 

Yeah, mine is mad quiet, no problems here.

 

And yah, my new X61 tablet is arriving next week, hope that works well.

 

It's a Fujitsu MHV2120BH PL , 120GB, not sure about RPMs. I got this from eBay. I have few these MHV2120BH each with different OS on them, the original is Fujitsu, one Hitachi from eBay as well, checked out all are 120GB, 5400 RPMs.

I remember running HDD diags before after installing the HDDs, anyway
HDD diag is running from the BIOS, let's see what happens there.

thanks for pitching in..

 

2 fans, 7200rpm hdd and its silent so none from my camp x61...

but if it did make that sound i wouldn't of ever purchased it

 

Yuk, I see a lot of Fujitsu's that do that. The Hitachi and Seagates are usually better drives.

 

Surprisingly, HDD diag from the BIOS is running ultra quiet without a single TICK sound.

Could this be a OS related since I am running RHEL5 (Linux) on Fujitsu HDD ?

What is exactly going on, Is there a way to figure out?

 

Hm, don't know. Its been a while since I have run redhat or fedora. I know Vista can.

 

That's the most biased question I've ever read.

 

that is a super bad poll

 

maybe it's related to the load/unload cycles problem? does it still click after issuing "hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda"?

 

i love my ultra-silent T61 (with 7200 HDD)

 

I may have a solution for you. Check you personal messages

 

Hello!

I have the same ticking issue with my T61. In my case it`s rather not the HDD. It doesn`t tick in BIOS, just under Vista. An interesting thing, that I noticed: when I open an image under GIMP and make a selection using the magic wand - the ticking instantly becomes faster, in fact, it becomes more like a uniform sound. It seems to be proportional to the extent of the selection. It does not happen under Photoshop Elements.

Second notice: when I change the power profile to "Maximum Battery Life" - ticking stops.

Might be something display/grapihics related (?)

Greetings
Albion

 

Like this problem...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=168425

 

this is so inapropriate to post this poll
1. you dont know where and what is causing it.
2. if the drive is making audible noise it certainly should. it all depends who is listening and how close you listen
3. why blame the laptop if it is the drive
4. if your drive is making a tick sound it may be faulty. did you ever try running the manufs diagnostics?
5. out of the last 5 years we have been selling laptops the same complaint was filed for every model we have ever sold. some complained on the fans some on the hard drive and some on other audible noise. laptops do make noise. before you start a thread like this make sure the noise is NOT normal and if it hinders normal use. certainly a hard drive should not click when it is idle and generally they do not.

 

if the issue is not hdd related then it most likely is being caused by a capcitor or voltage regulator somewhere inside. this does not mean the laptop will be breaking. this does mean you are bothered by the sound. like i said above. laptops make noise. most noise is normal but well paid technicians and engineers should be te judge of that

 

I have a t61p (the p means discrete graphics) and with a 200 GB Hitachi travelstar. It is totally silent.

 

another cpt'n hook here with a z61p with a 7200 100Gb seagate drive that clicks randomly with no regards to idle or work state , the sound itself isnt that annoying it's the feeling the drive is going to fail any minute that is really getting on my nerves although all checks (SMART , HDD diagnostics , Seatools ) seems fine i cant help going back to those memorys of old 6gb hdd's clicking away into oblivioun , i've read on some linux forums that seagate is having some sort of legal issue with the issuing of hdd's that use acoustic managment due to some patent ownership or something like that ,that might explain the cliky noises on seagate drives what it dosent is what's going on with all the rest..... , another culprit might be the active protection system ill try and uninstall and see if theres any change , i hardly think it will help but it's worth a shot

 

Download hdparm (ported from Linux), install it, and run:
hdparm -B 255 hdx

replace the x in hdx with the hard drive you think is 'clicking'. In most cases it'll be hda as you'll only have 1 hard drive in the laptop.

The clicking is a 'normal' sound from the hard drive. It's the sound of the hard drive head loading and unloading. It's a power saving feature the Seagate loves. Most Hitachi's I've had don't do it. The reason you hear it in Vista is that Vista accesses your hard drives about once a minute even if you are idle. Watch your resource monitor to confirm this. Even with SP1 beta this issue hasn't been resolved and you can find threads about it on all the developer forums. So while your machine is idle your hard drive parks it's heads after about 20 second of inactivity, then vista reads from the disk, rinse and repeat...... In your BIOS settings screen you won't hear it because your BIOS never ever accesses your hard drive, so once it goes idle and parks the head it doesn't unpark.

Try the fix, should take care of the problem. Using hdparm is only valid as long as the machine is running. Once you reboot the default power settings on the drive will take back over. I just put that in my startup for Vista... problem solved.

 

i can add that in the last 6 months we rma'd 20 seagates. most were 120gb 7200 sata2. that is about 10% rma rate. its very high for my liking. i would expect to see 2% rma rate not 10%. the clicking was a definite sign in some of them though not all. the ones that made it out in the field are fairing well.