Dell Inspiron 1520 Harddrive Noises

Hi, I got my 1520 a week ago and I'm just starting to notice that while my harddrive is idling (it's a Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160GB), there is an intermitten clicking sound followed by a sort of powering up/down/power surge sound, then the series of sounds repeat; however they go away once my harddrive is no longer idling. I ran a diagnostic from Seagate and it says everything checksout. Is anyone else getting this sound? It's not too loud but it can get quite annoying when the room is relatively quiet.

 

Clicking is almost always a sign of a dying hard drive. As long as it's under warranty (you said you just bought it) I would just let it click until it stops working and make sure to back up your data regularly in the mean time. Also, there is a Dell diagnostic tool available upon boot up that you can use. As soon as it fails that diagnostic, you can call Dell with the error code and they'll have your laptop repaired pretty quickly.

 

Clicking is almost always a sign of a working hard drive.
You are using Vista?

 

I'm not too worried about the clicking(maybe indexing?), it's the shut down sound that follow them that worries me. It happens about every 30-60sec, the sound is the same as the one made by the computer when it shuts down and its not just in Vista, I hear it in Media Centre and BIOS as well. I don't know if it's a power saving feature (since I only hear it when my drive is idling, but why multiple times?) or if the disk is just plain defective.

 

Try to run the Dell diagnostics to make sure if your hdd is working fine. You can access the diags when you start up your system and when you see the Dell logo, tap on the F12 key and then select diagnostics. Just run it and check if ever it will give you any error messages. If ever you encounter one, call dell tech support so that they can replace your hdd. You can also hit ctrl + alt +D when you see the dell logo, thats one way of loading the diagnostic menu.