Fan-like whoosh noise coming from laptop hard drive, NOT from fan

Megahertz07 said:

Just to check, take out the HDD and boot the laptop, Enter BIOS and see if the noise persists.

Great, thanks. I took out the HDD and rebooted, resulting in the following screens, I don't know if I was actually in the BIOS but anyway the noise was gone.

Then I rebooted with Linux on a USB stick; the noise was there when the HDD was in and gone when the HDD was removed. It wasn't the complete Linux OS, it was a sort of demo (not sure what the right word is) with desktop and programs that someone gave me but I don't imagine this matters for the current issue.

johnhoh said:

You can test this by setting a HDD idle time in Power Options Advanced power settings, or HDDScan or another utility may be able to spin down the HDD on demand so you can see if the noise stops

Thanks. I did both your suggestions, none of them stop the noise:

1) In Windows > Power Options > set hard disk to turn off after 1 minute

2) HDDScan lets you decrease the spindle rotation speed when drive is idling as well as stop it immediately. Neither had any effect on the noise. I wonder if it's really slowing/stopping though because wouldn't you hear a change in the sound if it was?

It seems I would need is a program that shows the actual current rotation speed. Is there such a thing? I tried searching around and can only find the many programs for testing whether a HDD is read/writing accurately which so far I have had no problem with at all.

catalogue said:

Thanks. I did both your suggestions, none of them stop the noise:

1) In Windows > Power Options > set hard disk to turn off after 1 minute

2) HDDScan lets you decrease the spindle rotation speed when drive is idling as well as stop it immediately. Neither had any effect on the noise. I wonder if it's really slowing/stopping though because wouldn't you hear a change in the sound if it was?

It seems I would need is a program that shows the actual current rotation speed. Is there such a thing? I tried searching around and can only find the many programs for testing whether a HDD is read/writing accurately which so far I have had no problem with at all.

The fact that you are trying to spin down the boot drive is the difficulty here. I am not aware of a reliable way to do it nor am I aware of a utility that does what you ask. Sorry

Ah OK, thanks for clearing that up.

I started a new thread because as you can see there, it is now a question of HDD spinning which deserves its own topic line as opposed to this one which was about an undiagnosed noise.

Laptop hard drive almost permanently spinning and never idle

catalogue said:

Great, thanks. I took out the HDD and rebooted, resulting in the following screens, I don't know if I was actually in the BIOS but anyway the noise was gone.

Then I rebooted with Linux on a USB stick; the noise was there when the HDD was in and gone when the HDD was removed. It wasn't the complete Linux OS, it was a sort of demo (not sure what the right word is) with desktop and programs that someone gave me but I don't imagine this matters for the current issue.

Despite of everyone thoughts, it isn't a fan. The noise comes from the HDD.

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I have bought some of these. So far so good.
Crucial BX500 2.5" 480GB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT480BX500SSD1 - Newegg.com