[AW14] Should I keep the bracket in place while taking out the optical drive?

I took out the odd together with the bracket in order to reduce the weight, but I was wondering,
do I need to put back the empty bracket to keep the rigidity of the machine? Is the bracket part of the support of the base?
Also, my rig is making a weird, twitching noise and the source seems to be the harddisk.
I guess it makes this noise everytime it's shuted down or turned on.
Is it normal? Does anyone having the same problem? The noise is quite loud and sounds like something is being torn apart.
My laptop is tilted all the time as it's on a cooling pad. Would it do any harm to the hdd?
Anyway I'll do a HD tune check first.
Any help is appreciated!!

 

The 14's chassis is extremely sturdy and the ODD bracket isn't contributing to anything structurally. I'd have no problem leaving it out.

Not sure about the noise, but based on what you're describing it doesn't sound normal. Any way you could record and post it?

 

thanks mate
maybe I've exaggerated the noise, it;s more like a squeak
As it's not constant, i may not be able to reproduce it and record
But then I remember my WD external harddisk makes similar noise when the computer it's connected to is being powered off,
so I guess it's the normal noise when a hdd is shuting down?
since the other laptop i have runs windows and storage all on same drive, the harddisk doesn't stop at any moment(I guess)
but in the alienware, the hdd is for storage only, so it will shut down when not in use
could it be the case?
sigh...anyway I'm running a HD tune full scan, the result should prove something

 

It could be that, you could try to run the PC on high performance (power plan) and see if the issue is gone with that.

 

HD tune scan shows all green....seems fine
I use performance power plan most of the time....I will try to notice if it happens again
thanks!!