Hello everybody!
This problem, that bothers you all, is the reason I signed in to club-vaio!
I have a FE11S for over a year now and from time to time I hear the clicking... I was sure that this was not within the normal working conditions of the hard disk and I was worried about a disk failure!
Each time it happened, next thing was to run a defrag on the HDD and then turn of the computer for about 15min. After that I didn't hear the click for almost a week, sometimes two...I know this is not the solution but I think it helps not to wear down the HDD.
I also don't believe that the HDD will fail because of this anymore.
My little experience on working in a computer company, where we also had to replace notebooks's components, says that if something works you don't send it to be fixed!!!! Trust me on that!
I don't believe sony's fixing lab enviroment is better! Nor the service!
(the last I know for sure!)
Is there any other working solution than sending the vaio back?
Sorry if that was already mentioned before, I didn't have the time to read all posts!
Good afternoon to everyone and don't forget to backup...

You are to lazy to read all the posts, and leave us to do that for you....kinda insulting. Cmon you have a problem, you should put some efford into it. You are having this problem on YOUR laptop not us. You do have time to ask some idiot to do your own job but not the time to read the posts. Time you make, it seems to me you don't really care about this problem and you be rather hearing the clicking sound then reading this thread.

By the way it doesnt matter what you believe is better, what matter is the solution and the solution is somewhere here in this thread. The more you wait the more you will have to read....

if something works you don't send it to be fixed!!!! Trust me on that!

IT DOES NOT WORK DOES IT?

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...

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".

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!

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

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.

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.

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.