Dell D820 - Consistent clicking noise from leftside

Hi everyone.. so I have a Dell D820 which I've owned for roughly 1 year since purchase. Everything has been good until I noticed the last month or so there seems to be this consistent (maybe every 1min or so) click coming from the bottom leftside of my laptop. It sounds exactly like the "power-up or down" noise the laptop makes when you turn it on or shut it off. I figured it had something to do with the HDD since it is really the only thing coming from that side that moves.

Anyways.. I spent the last week calling Dell tech support. Spent about 1 hr or so with the tech first running a whole bunch of diagnostics with nothing bad showing up. Finally they ended up sending me a replacement HDD (a 40 gig) to install.

Fast forward to earlier this week when I received and installed the HDD.. even when just talking to the tech guy over the phone having him walk me through the installation process I still kept hearing the clicking noise. I informed him of the problem but he seemed to kinda ignore it and just insisted of walking me through the installation of the drivers and stuff.

The good thing is I have the warranty until April 2009. Bad thing is I am swamped with school work (last semester in university) so I really dont have time to sit and backup/format the hdd all the time.

I tried googling and searching for a solution to this problem, but I found nothing. Anyone here experience the same problem or have some information about it? What would be the next step when I call Dell Tech support again? I have a bad feeling I will probably be told that "it is a normal noise the laptop is making", but I am 100% sure that this noise is a consistent click which was NEVER there before.

 

Its probably nothing to worry about it. Alot of people are concerned over the clicking noise of the hard disk, in many notebooks. Its normally created when the arm has to move and collect data of the platter. As a result, it will make click noise. Some hard disks will park the arm to the side, and that will create a similar noise if the arms are parked every minute or so.

Unless the noise gets louder, or in any way worse, I wouldn't worry about it. Take precautions, however, just in case, and back up any important work or documents on the notebook.

 

Yeah it is weird. The click/noise is only noticeable or felt (since i rest my left palm on that side of the laptop) only when the room is silent. There is a possibilty the noise could have been going on for the last year and I am just being anal about it now since I noticed it.

 

Mine does the exact same thing. I also called tech support and they didn't know what it was either. It still does it, but I've just learned to live with it and back up all the data more often.