Installed 7k320 drive in T400 - vibration galore!

So I swapped the drive in my T400 for a Hitachi 7k320 (7200 rpm) drive.

I'd read some people saying they felt more noise/vibration from it, but thought I'd try it out anyway.

I should have paid more attention when the original (7k200/160gb) drive was in there, but it definitely feels rather vibratory (as it were) to me. My fingers almost tingle from the vibration. The machine isn't getting appreciably hotter, however.

I'm going to swap the original drive back and see if it's a big difference; tho' I'd like to have the 320gb in there, and probably could get used to it, I think I'd prefer it quieter and with less vibration. If it ends up being a big difference, I'll use the 320gb drive in the drive adapter for the bay.

I shall report back.

- Tim

 

TK320 is a two platter drive if I'm not mistaken. It shouldn't offer very much vibration at all compared to your other disk, unless the mounting process in the T400 is somehow different on this drive than the other. I've never yanked a T400 drive out - but if it has screws in the housing/sled, you could always head to a home improvement store and pick up some thin nylon washers to match the size of screws. or rubber, or silicone if you're lucky. That should dampen some of the spindle vibration transferring to the mounting hardware (drive sled) if you can get the extra depth to fit.

 

Hitachi 7K320 has been reported to vibrate quite a lot.

I don't know if you can still change it but from the reports I've read the Seagate 7200.3 320GB vibrates less than the Hitachi. It's also slightly faster.

You could also change the Acoustic Management on the 7K320 to reduce vibration.

 

WD Scorpios work very nicely - cool, quiet, and no vibration.

 

I personally wouldn't buy a Hitachi drive. Seagate is still the best and they're cheap.

 

I've always had good luck with both of them. But I've heard of vibration problems with all 3 of the 320g notebook hard drives, unfortunately. Don't want to go through all of them and find they're all too vibratory.

- Tim

 

I think with the top 3 makers, Hitachi, Seagate, WD, you can't go wrong.

Other brands (Toshiba, Fujitsu, etc) are poo. (based on my experience)

If I had to rank order the three, it would be:

1.) WD
2.) Seagate
3.) Hitachi

(talking about 2.5" drive).

 

I have the Seagate 7200.3 and it runs very nicely. It doesn't use much power either and stays nice and cool. Oh yeah, it's FAST!

 

I tried a 7k200 in my T400, and it didn't increase vibration over a 5400, but it did get noticeably hotter.

I like Seagate drivers, than Hitachi. I have never owned a WD 2.5" drive, so I can't speak about them.

 

Really, didn't increase vibration? Mine shipped with a 7k200 (also a 7200rpm drive), and the 7k320 produced about 3 times the vibration (roughly) of the 7k200. So either your 5400rpm drive vibrated a lot, or my 7k320 is a bad unit. ... or I'm just much more sensitive to vibration?

In any case, I put the 7k200 back in and am using that as the main drive, since the 7k320 produced just too much vibration for my taste.

- Tim

 

Maybe you did not read it but it's also possible to change the Acoustic Management on the 7K320 to reduce vibration. I believe Hitachi has a tool for that.

 

hmm. i just got this hard drive for my t400 and i absolutely notice more vibration than the 7k200 that was in there before..so i came straight here to NBR to check out if others had the same experience =P

can someone shed a little more light on the acoustic management? i'd like to give it a try before deciding what to do ... also, is it true that all of the 320gb 7200 rpm drives vibrate a lot? if so, then i'll probably stick with the hitachi.. otherwise i'd probably want to switch to a hd that doesn't make my hands tingle from the shaking =P

 

My CLEVO M570TU based notebook has this harddrive:

HITACHI Travelstar 7K320 HTS723232L9A360 (0A57547) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

And I don't have any issues concerning high vibration. I have also tried the Hitachi Feature Tool to disable settings like Acoustic Management but for some reason my bootable CD will not run the Feature Tool as it hangs during startup.