Clicking harddisk sound FE11S sequel

[Carelino]

Now just like a lot of Vaio FE11S users I had the clicking sound where my hardisk is. People who suggest it is the hardisk working, please save me the trouble of telling 100 times it is not the harddisk working sound. I had enough laptops to know the difference.

DOWNLOAD CLICKING SOUND

Now what I would like to know is if there has been anyone who send his/her laptop to Sony back to let them check it out. If yes, I ofcourse would really like to know what sony told you or what you did eventually. It seems to me nobody knows the solution. I did call sony and told them everything about the problem. They said it was something wich is new to them. I gave them the club-vaio link where people posted about the same problem. This coming week I am going to send my laptop to sony, this clicking sound disturbs me a lot.

I know that there are previous threads about this Old thread about clicking sound link , but I wanted to post a sequal where people could post their experience and opinion. Please don't suggest me to open up my harddisk or laptop, and once again it is NOT the harddisk working sound.

What happens: "The hard disk makes irregularly a clicking sound which is pretty loud two. Most certainly is not a working sound. It sounds like something is hitting the plastic of the laptop or something else. When I shut down my laptop and restart the sound is gone for a while." I personally think it has something to do with the reading arm. The clicking sound appears always when the laptop is not working. It's like when the harddisk is not working it cant get into the resting position, and keep on trying. I hope sony is going to spend serious time on this problem, especially it seems to be a common problem.

Important suggestions and remarks of others:

hard drive is made by fujitsu & they have a diagnostic software tool on the fujitsu web site & when i ran it, the program said no hard drive found on laptop, i spoke to fujitsu & they said i should wait for later version of software to come out, which i will do! anyone who goes to fujitsu web site, the version i tryed is 6.40

This is the response I have received from Fujitsu regarding the issue: We connected this drive MHV2160BT to our analyser and installed Windows XP Pro, we did not hear any obvious clicking noise unless you place your ear next to the drive so it is very quiet even though this does go into sleep mode at around every 4-10 seconds (idle). I would investigate if you can further into the specifications and configurations fitting of your Sony Laptop.

[dartrax]

Started A Petition Regarding Sony's Customer Service Please Take Time To Preview

http://www.petitiononline.com/CRI/petition.html

KJ

I've signed the petition, but I think you should stress more the special problem of the Fujitsu Siemens HDDs. You just wrote that the repair center was not able to repair you Vaio with their first try, but that's normal, I fear. Nearly 50 % of all Notebooks which are sent to a repair center must be sent again.

dartrax

[jimmy.riddle]

my vaio vgn-ar11m is doing this clicking noise .. but im hoping to change my drive to seagate momentus 7200 .. posted to see if anyone has tried changing the hdd ... any help please

[tusken]

Hi everyone,
my vgn-fe31b is clicking too.. with this annoying sound, every 10 or 15 seconds. I Just bought it yesterday. I red most of the posts here but still don't know what to do. I'm in France if it happened to someone else here..

[Carelino]

I suggest somebody to go to the consumer association. These people should be able to do something about this situation. This thread has been visited by almost 37000 people wich have the simialair problem. I know Holland has a place to go for the consumer. Take some efford.

The worst thing is Sony is still building and selling the same problem to people in NEW models and laptops. It is clear that people with FE model are the ones who get the clicking sound. And moreover it almost seems to be so that people with 160 GB harddisk have this problem.

If I still would have my laptop I would have done it. Since it has been stolen I dont have anything to complain about anymore. I started this thread in order to gather user experience so people could find a solution toghether.

I see somebody started a petition. It looks nice, but besides that you should find something wich could attract Sony attention immediatly.

I hope I can pass on the torch to somebody else to lead this thread. I hope I will see a thread real soon "SOLUTION CLICKING SOUND" OR "SONY IN BIG TROUBLE" . And remember nothing worthwhile is easy.

[myrtosgr]

I reopened my case at sony's site & they said they would send me the cd with the fix. Still waiting after one month. Hope those 37000 people who visited this thread would sign the petition & sent a BIG message to Sony.
Myrtos Grece

[edwoodjnr]

The update fix didn't work for me. See my earlier post if you want the files on the CD, just use NERO to make a bootable CD.

I have now bought a 120gb Seagate Momentus drive and will fit it next week when the cable arrives to transfer the contents using Acronis True Image Clone function. I will let you know how I get on.

[edwoodjnr]

Well I swapped the old (crappy) Fujutsu drive with the Seagate and it was very easy using Acronis Trueimage to copy over the software and my data.

I firstly connected the new drive using a SATA USB cable (see ebay, mine came from Hong Kong). Then, using the Acronis recovery CD to boot the software from DOS I did a simple disk clone and selecting the automated and proportional options. This effectively managed the different partitions from 160gb to 120gb proportionally.

Now my disk is faster and much quieter, no more annoying clicking.

I am of course no longer a Sony fan but I do like my VAIO now.

[catrapumba]

what are the rpm of the seagate?

ps one way round the noise is to keep mp3 with media player playing in the background - as it keeps the disk spinning.

[edwoodjnr]

I went for the Seagate Momentus 120gb, 5400rpm. I figured it was a good compromise in terms of better performance with the same power consumption as the Fujitsu and for a not too expensive price.

To keep the head spinning is definitely one option however it will drain your battery quicker.

[Seawit]

A lot has been said already and after a small research and some testing, i realized that almost all Fujitsu MHV2xxxBT hard drives have this "clicking problem". Altough i'm not so sure if it is a real problem and if it applies to all posters, there's already some sounds collected from hardware specialists available to sort if the refered sound is one that really means that the HD is having problems. One of the manufacturers that are currently researching around this issue is Hitachi. Users should troubleshoot first through these sound samples before going any further.

As i see it, and besides the fact that it IS an annoying sound, the click refered by the majority of the users is related to safeguard technology that these kinds of HD's have. Theoreticly, this technologies prevents the HD for being damaged when idle or when reaching higher temperatures.

There are two solutions that i've found out:
1 - to try to get a software that enables the user to change the acoustic management of SMART system to maximum perfomance. But, unfortunetaly, i haven't been able to found, yet, a suitable and effective one that works with Fujitus HD's.
2 - To try to get a firmware update for Fujitsu HD's that would change the acoustic management to maximum perfomance also. In the same way, i haven't found also this one, yet.

If anyone finds where to get what i've mencioned in these solutions, please post in here... i'm also interested in reducing these annoying noises.