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.

[Carelino]

Ok Ill do this once since I started this thread. Underneath this text you can read all the solutions wich has been presented in this forum you pick the one you like best.
For people who want to hear how it sounds the clicking sound click on this link:
Download clicking sound

Carelino

Well, I just called sony and they told me they changed a connector of the harddisk. They said the problem was not the harddisk but the connector between the harddisk and the motherboard Part= MS10. They tested the laptop for two days and came to this conclusion. Ofcourse they could not give me any techincal information, but according to them the problem should be fixed now

It's been months now and I don't have any clicking sounds anymore...they really fixed it...

Dartrax

Response from Sony in the german forum "notebookjournal", user "heartwork" 
The phenomen you've described was found on several HDs in this series. There is no danger for the HD.

In order to eliminate this sound we are working on a new firmware for the HD.

Please take a look at our download-area on the vaio-link.com-Page from time to time for the download if it's available.

We ask for your understanding.

hearthwork has written that he has solved his clicking problem with a piece of felt between HD and "housing".

Nikza

They tried to fool me again, they tried to tell me lies...!!!

Anyway, 
at last I got my firmware update cd from them,
the problem seems to be gone. 
Hope it stays that way...
And I promise to myself never again to buy Sony's laptops...
NEVER!

Spread the news! 

edwoodjnr

For FE21M only, you can get it here:

http://gavin.benson.users.btopenworld.com/Downloads/fe21m.zip

Please note, it is a Sony file intended for the fe21m 160gb HDD and you will need to use it at your own risk, I WILL NOT be responsible for any problems you may encounter by using this zip file

Seawit

 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.

Lietkeynes

I have to say that I haven't had the problem after flashing the disk about a month ago with this firmware. These are the steps I took to flash my HD:

1.- Create a bootable cd with nero burning rom including the files inside this zip. There are the options create cd and create bootable cd, select the later. I used the version 7, I'm not sure if you can do it with version 6 or lower.

2.- Boot from the cd. You have to select the cd unit with the command x: being x the letter of the unit.

3.- Run the file DLJ0014.bat and after the flashing, take the cd from the unit and reboot.

You can check if your firmware is flashed to the version 14 using a program like Everest, in storage -> ata -> revision

Good luck.

Sinola69

I've been watching this thread now for near on a year. I'm a FE11s owner and have had the clunking/clicking all this time. Finally I contacted Sony support. [THEY KNOW THE PROBLEM]
They sent me the firmware revision 14, talked about in previous postings. [DID NOT WORK]
They asked me to do a scan Hard drive error check. [ALL IN WORKING ORDER]
They asked me to shut down Hard drive via power management.[NO CLUNKING/CLICKING]
They PICKED UP my beloved Vaio last week. 
Returned on Monday with a new Hard drive,[NO CLUNKING OR CLICKING] Silence is golden.
All i tried to say is you know the problem. Contact Sony, they will replace your hard drive.
Viao's are still good computers. And yes they look good. Is that not why we paid £.

I got my Vaio back in 5 days from pick-up. And had Sony calling me every 3 days to see if they could help me. In this day and age this is good customer care. 

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.

Personally I think Sinola's advice is the best one. I sent my laptop as well and never ever heard any clicking sounds anymore. Most important thing is Sony admit there is a problem wich gives people with laptop who do not have a warrenty anymore a chance to demand a fix.

Good luck all of you hoped this thread helped everybody a little bit. I want to thank everybody for his support in finding a solution for this problem Sony admits there is. Thx to all of you all of this has been made possible.

P.S. for people with diffrent models of Sony Vaio laptops, wish I could help you but the only thing I can give to you is above.

[parekhd]

I think that the firmware update to version 14 fixed it for me as well! Had a little trouble creating the CD at first, because I was trying to put it onto a bootable DVD (as a didn't have a spare CD-RW available at the time). Eventually I managed to create a boot CD that worked. I did this by choosing the "boot cd" option in Nero, and simply burning the files to a CD-RW.

Upon boot, I pressed F2 (i think) to get into the BIOS and set the boot order so that CD-ROM was higher in the list. After restarting the computer, the CD booted. I typed "D:" to navigate to the D drive (my CD-ROM drive) and thene executed the .bat file on the CD. Took about 30 seconds to run the firmware and that was it! No clicking since!

[raheller]

same here 🙂 updated firmware definately worked for me as well! (FE21m). before, I had to have virusscanners or defrag running all the time so the constant clicking wouldn't drive me mad. but now after the update I'm clickfree for more than a week all ready!!
I would definately recommend trying it before sending it off (for a fe21m anyway)

btw, isn't it weird that they've released an update for the fe21m only and not for the other troubled models? doesn't make sense to me...

[edwoodjnr]

Well I am glad it worked out for you guys, I will continue to host the firmware upgrade file. Still no clicking at all with my Seagate drive.

[sgupta123]

Mate..i have the exact same sound in my FE21M and always wondered what it is on idle...i havnt told sony about it yet but will do so as my laptop is with them now due to a freak battery problem which i have posted about a while back. But i wont be surprised if they end up blaming me for it and charge me as well!! Sony really has appalling service.

[Page]

So I have this annoying clicking sound like everyone else - and it really annoys me - I take the sony to bed and listen to internet radio on it at low volume so the click is really bad in that situation.

I (think) I then came to this forum - Only because of this - way back - and turned off the disc power save options so that it was always on. And if memory serves well it went away and happiness and joy and the delight of having a lovely FGE11S machine returned to me.

This was the case for many many months.

Now it has returned arggh and I have no idea why. The only thing that I think of that I may have done is take it out on a little trip. But I am not sure. It is one of those things that you ignore at first and pay little attention to - but like Japanese water torture it builds and builds and builds.

So I came back to find the definitive solution after all this time and guess what it is still an ongoing thread. Sadness and misery.

[Page]

Ah maybe I have remebered what I did now.

It was all nice and quiet and lovely with the hard disc set to never power off. The one day I decided to make even it even more quiet by seeing what happened if I set the hard discs to power off after 5mins of inactivity.

It may have been then that it restarted. But now with the discs never powering off again it has not gone away.

I think it might be related to a certain mix of going into sleep - suspend and disc power settings.

But argh argh argh -m I just don't know. Boo hoo.

[Page]

Now get this.

I thought I might try and see what changing the power settings and turning it off and back on might achieve.

I was going to keep a log of my attempts.

I put the turn hard discs off after 5 mins when on mains and turned it off by pressing the power button - a hunch. Not the norml windows shut down.

I then rebooted it.

As a first bit of investigation I was interested to see if there was a clicking sound before I logged in. If not it would imply a user setting. There was none.

I have now just logged in to my user account and there is still no clicking noise. Sorry but I am so happy that I am not prepared to touch anything now just in case it was a one off. (Maybe it will come back anyway - in which case I will let you know).

But if you are having problems it may be worth trying some mix of forced shut down and reboots. Keep an exact record of what you do and if you have success post it here and be loved by the many that you will have helped.

Fingers crossed.

[Page]

Sorry but I am so happy about the noise going that i just had to tell people.

Time for internet radio.

[peteriks5]

The clicking HDD issue showed up on my FE31H yesterday. In my case it was the power saving feature for sure that caused it. I activated those features for the first time yesterday and as soon as the laptop idled, the clicking began. I unchecked all HDD related power saving features as well as did a hard reboot (i normally hibernate) and i havent heard a clicking sound since. Hopefully it stays away and hopefully someone else can solve this issue the same easy way i did.