Hey all, I purchased a new laptop recently, an Compaq Presario (Link) One thing I've noticed is that it's BLOODY LOUD! I'm not talking about the fans either, which are of normal volume. It's the hard drive and perhaps the cpu itself. You can almost literally hear every head movement of the HDD, all the clicks and clacks and what not. What i presume is the cpu is the odd whining and odd sounds that come from within the beast itself. In a normal enviroment, its not too bad, and even in a quiet enviroment its tolerable, but i was wondering if this were normal, as all my other laptops don't have near amount of noise as this one does. Any insight into what's with the noise? Ryan
You might've gotten a crappy hard drive if you hear it clicking. I don't know how safe I'd feel storing my data on something that makes those kinds of sounds. The CPU fan might be loud just because they tend to be smaller (whinier) in laptops. I'd read some reviews and see if other people are having the same complaints. If not, you might want to look into a replacement.
I've had / used a couple of Presario in the past (via work) and it wasn't any louder than any other laptop. Certainly didn't create the noise you are suggesting.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the drive itself, as i've yet to have any issues that would suggest otherwise. My Acer is pretty quiet, and compared to that, the Presario seems much louder, its comparable to my older Compaq. As example, right now im watching TV (big bang theory) at a fairly good volume, and i can ever so slightly hear the drive every now and again. Should i maybe run some disc checking software? Maybe I'm just paranoid after all... Ryan
if your HD is being loud check to see if your bios has anything for HD performance or acoustic management. if not there are some utils out there that can set the acoustics down abit at the cost of a little speed but you will probably notice huge difference in sound. Your looking for anything to do with HD AAM.
clicking sounds? check. The laptop i m currently using has those whenever the access light of the HDD blinks. It's been running well for the last 4 years despite these sounds. Looking back, I ve never seen an HDD that didn't make any sounds at close range. the "clicking" you and I are referring to isn't the same as the clicks of death by the way. The clicks of death are quite loud, not just an annoying buzz.
I remember when laptop hard drives used to make beeping sounds when they did any hard disc activity... on this HP DV2000 laptop, the hard drive makes clicking sounds when being accessed but nothing too loud.
Hi, new member here and my first post so I hope that you dont think im a newby spammer advertising junk. Im trying to help. Ive found that segate drives can be very clicky when moving the head across the disc surface and I think its due to lose ball bearings in the mech clacking together when the head arm changes direction although I have not opened one up to verify this. Im not sure if your drive is segate but if you are really worried about the noise problem I can recommend a program called spinrite by grc that I have used since the old MS-DOS PC-XT days !, it does a great job at testing your drive steppers/disk surface/error rates and will even estimate the drives remaining lifetime, using this program I managed to recover about 92% of my data from a drive that went nuts and kept banging its head against the end stop !. Good luck with your drive.
Thanks guys for the help. I guess i'm just a bit paranoid with noise and odd things like that (after all we just lost an xserve last week,...so I'm a bit cautious) Spinrite! Gotta love it, great program! Thanks all Ryan
Why did you get a presario? compaq makes the shittiest PCs ever. I have had all kinds of problems with compaq desktops and laptops, hope yours wont stop working like one of mine did. Good luck
Weird....my 10 year old compaq still runs great, so does my 3 year old other compaq presario (aside from some worn off paint) My Asus's are rather fine, and my Acer is okay too.....guess it's just luck of the draw
I had two presarios: one in 1997 and another in 1999. The 97 laptop started losing parts a month after purchase, yet compaq didnt quite "honored" the warranty: they just superglued the hinge. The desktop in 1999 was a present from my parents. It costed A LOT, almost $3K, and it was a disaster from day one: a CDRW that never worked, the crappiest Voodoo3 version and worst of all, a generic RAM that caused all kinds of problems until I replaced it. I believe I even developed a phobia due to that, and even today I think it twice before buying something that may need repairs in the near future.
Double check to see if it is the fan. Get the manufacturer's diagnostic software for the HDD you have and run tests on it. See if it passes.
