New
#1
Fan-like whoosh noise coming from laptop hard drive, NOT from fan
Is there anything wrong with my laptop if it is making a constant noise that sounds like a fan but positively 100% definitely ABSOLUTELY is not the fan? Details:
- Thinkpad T520 with a new 1 Tb Western Digital HD installed 6 months ago. However the noise began a year before that with the *original* HD and the new HD has the same noise. Very strange. I thought it must be the fan, due to accumulated dust, but it's not - see below.
- The noise happens the entire time the computer is on and is constant and unchanging. It does not vary, such as louder/quieter or higher/lower. It is 100% perfectly continuous.
- It sounds a little like a laptop fan but definitely louder and 'rougher'. My fan itself has a very very quiet smooth whisper, almost a hum, that barely sounds at all like air moving, whereas this noise is much more of a whoosh, almost like the sound of a fan on a big heavy-duty desktop computer.
- We know it's not the fan, and that the fan is working fine, because I can lift up the keyboard and see when the fan is or isn't running. Mostly it's not moving at all; then if I make the CPU go to 50 or 100%, for example by playing four HD movies at once (as a test), it will turn on. Then when I close the movies the CPU goes down to its resting rate around 0 to 2% and the fan turns off. Meanwhile the noise I'm talking about remains constant the whole time.
- It is not the normal "stuttering" HD read/write sound. I know what that sounds like and I can hear it from the HD as is normal when reading/writing; meanwhile the whoosh remains continuous. The read/write sound is very faint and hard to hear below the whoosh but it is there.
- It is definitely coming from the area of the HD and processor.
- It only started a year or so ago, with the original HD, but also happens with the brand new HD with a new Windows installation, which is very strange.
- I absolutely can not feel any unusual heat at all on the bottom where the HD is.
Last edited by catalogue; 08 Jul 2019 at 16:24. Reason: clarification