Is the HDD from your notebook 'clicking' a lot under Windows / Linux ?

[Catalin]

A friend of mine had some problems like that and in the end he created a small Windows program (that he also open-sourced) that works together with other open-source programs in order to fix those things (but IMHO the program is still only for the more technical users).

The more detailed description can he found on his blog - http://cool-stuff-or-not.blogspot.com/2008/02/managing-notebook-hdd-problems-with.html - and also links to the actual project on SourceForge.

[Darwin]

Thanks for the link, Catalin. I don't have this trouble on my own notebook, but will try it on my wife's (when/if it comes back for repair to its DC power supply), which has a very noisy Toshiba HD.

[ChalkTrauma]

Another thing you can do is adjust the acoustic settings using a disk feature tool from the manufacturer. You can trade a little performance for a quieter drive that will last a bit longer. The feature tool is usually a iso downloadable from the manufacturer's site that you burn to a bootable CD so you can change hardware settings.. This was one of the first things I did on my Thinkpad because my Hitachi HD was very noisy. I think many of the feature tools also come bundled with the ultimate boot CD: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

[Catalin]

Another thing you can do is adjust the acoustic settings using a disk feature tool from the manufacturer. You can trade a little performance for a quieter drive that will last a bit longer. The feature tool is usually a iso downloadable from the manufacturer's site that you burn to a bootable CD so you can change hardware settings.. This was one of the first things I did on my Thinkpad because my Hitachi HD was very noisy. I think many of the feature tools also come bundled with the ultimate boot CD: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Actually that small program is doing that too 
I believe the hdparm command for that is -M and with that program you can configure separate acoustic settings for AC and batteries ...
And if you are really serious about HDD lasting longer you should check the amount of load-cycles - my friend convinced me that the amount of excessive load-cycles is probably what kills more than half of the notebook drives, and now - after we saw a new Dell from a common third friend getting 100000 cycles in less than 4 months only using preinstalled Windows - I am a believer 

[f0dder]

Your friend should spend some time learning how to present material properly, though... at not place does he explain what the problem really is. I guess it's read/write head auto-park on inactivity, though?

[Catalin]

Your friend should spend some time learning how to present material properly, though... at not place does he explain what the problem really is. I guess it's read/write head auto-park on inactivity, though?

You are correct - he did some posts in the past on the same matter but none is linked in the latest one - he was probably targeting more the people that already knew or at least heard about that ...

[Catalin]

Your friend should spend some time learning how to present material properly, though... at not place does he explain what the problem really is. I guess it's read/write head auto-park on inactivity, though?

I believe that was improved a little after the weekend