AW 17 R3: Noises from harddrive after heavy gaming

Hello, I just got my laptop with no SSD four days ago. And I did almost 24 hours of gaming. i noticed there is a noise coming from the harddrive today. Not sure if it was there since the beginning.

Like this(uploaded by another 17 R3 user from alienware forum with the same issue as mine):


1. What causes this sound?
2. Is the hard drive itself the issue or is there some thing else which causes this sound in the harddrive?
3. I am getting the replacement hard drive. What can be done to avoid this issue in future?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

 

I also have the 1tb hdd with no ssd.
I'm assuming it's the HGST HTS72101??, if so i guess that is normal, remember that this is a 7200rpm hdd so the read/write heads need to move faster as well.

I have the exact same sound (and even some sort of whizzing/buzzing during certain activities), and my interpretation (which i'm 99% sure of) is that this sound is just the drive heads moving and is normal.

I could be wrong though.

 

See this thread: https://na.alienwarearena.com/forums/thread/119643/technical-support-1/hard-drive-making-noise/last
People there agree that there's some issue with the hdd. It doesn't bother me much as the noise is very low and can be heard only if we place the ears near the left speaker. But just afraid the drive might eventually fail. Anyway will report if there's any sound after I replace hdd.

 

They are probably the same clueless bunch, either acquiring a computer first time in their lives, or never seen a 7200 RPM performance drive. We have a saying for this, roughly translated:

"Cat saw her asshole and thought she is injured!"

It is a freaking hard drive. It has platters that spin, heads that move. Even 5400 RPM drives do that (albeit with less intensity). That is an actuator moving the heads, also called "seeking". Novices are better off with the cheapest SSD because you probably have gazillion of Windows services that thrash the disk nonstop (antivirus, indexing, defragging, pagefiles, whatnot).

If you think your hard drive is dying, check its SMART values. When weird sounds appear that might indicate imminent drive failure, you will find "downshift, high-fly writes, uncorrectables, etc" are no longer zero.

 

Do intermittent buzzing/whizzing sounds count as normal for 1tb 7200rpm HDDs?

 

just want to share my experience.. i got the alienware 17 r2.. i also had a problem with my hdd at 1st when i got the laptop it was on bios a02 and i didnt had any issues with it.. when the heat issue arised, people was suggesting to use a00 which i followed the suggestion and used a00. for afew days using my laptop gaming i didnt noticed any problems until my gf told me there is always a loud tick/click sound on doing a restart and shutting down the computer. that made me worry because i dont want to lose data if my hdd crashed. i asked dell tech support and there solution was to change hdd. while waiting for dell the new bios a06 came out. i updated it and fixed the problem. not sure what happened there but maybe maybe it got to do with mei update? well not sure here. hahaha. just sharing. i had to cancel dells replacement hdd. problem solved for me. my point here is that it might be a firmware issue for hdd or some software causing it. you hdd might be just doing it normal job and a certain software is causing the issue. hope that helps.


edited: just want to add i had the grinding sound as well while the hard drive is being used like copying large file. i believe that just the mechanics or the hdd.