Asus K52J brand new laptop already making HDD grinding noise?

Hi, i recently purchased an Asus (K52JC-X3) 15.6" Laptop, 2.0GHz Intel Pentium P6100, 4GB RAM, 640GB HDD on boxing day. However when i opened it and started working on it (by that i mean surfing the net, checking emails, youtube, really basic stuff), whenever the HDD light flashes this soft grinding noise can be heard. Its the kind of noise you hear when your old pc has a hard time opening simple tasks like MS word and it takes a little while however with my laptop it loads things fast, but the noise is still there (whether im on battery mode or ive plugged it in, there is no difference). Some are saying that this is a problem with the series, my question is -how can i solve this? Also, if you have this laptop or know about it, does this noise actually affect the laptops performance/longevity? because if it eventually craps out on me in a few months because of this, id rather get my money back. Just to add, I had the same problem with the same laptop i had purchased on boxing day, thinking it was a faulty laptop i returned it back in exchange for a new one of the same model(of which i currently have), but the same problem is coming up--what are the chances? It must be a series issue...I have no idea how to go about this and I have a week left before Im no longer allowed to return it back for $. Any help is much appreciated, thanks!

ps. i have tried some things such as the 'regedit' solution ( Fix the Asus Laptop High Pitched Noise Problem) and setting the max/min processor power to 100% but both 'solutions' have not worked. There was another thread with the same issue for a dell series but they dont have a 64bit version, so i cant use that either( http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell/168425-clicking-noise-issue-resolved.html).

 

Why even thing about taking a chance with a new laptop - if it's making a strange noise return it and get a new one !!

 

Download HDTune and have a look at the SMART health for any warnings and do a full error scan.

 

i already did that and its mentioned in my post, im currently using my 'second' laptop of the same series. BOTH have had the same problem...

Thanks, downloaded the HDTune pro trial thing, the full error scan with the grid came up all green which was fine, and the SMART health check gave me no warnings-i guess everything came up clean but the same noise is still there--does this mean that its okay to use or is there something else I can check it with? thanks for all your help.

 

Sounds okay to me, could be a asus model flaw.

What model is the drive? Post the model number that shows in HDtune. Maybe the drive is just notorious for being noisy.

 

There could be a firmware update for your drive. Post the model # as flipfire requested and maybe someone will be able to chime in with more specific advice.

 

Its a ST9640320AS 640GB. Also an update on the noise, now its more intermittent and sounds like its disc skipping. (a 'tch' noise a few seconds apart). The original noise is there on startup/shutdown but if im just typing, like right now, and i pause to go have a listen I can hear the 'tch' noise-almost sounds like the camera lens as you click a picture. Thanks again for all the help everyone.

 

That sound could be the heads parking, have you checked your drive power management settings? You can also give quiethdd a try: quietHDD

 

before i give quietHDD a try(was there some question as to whether it will work on windows 7/64bit?), another quick question-how do i check the drive power mgmt settings? ive never had any problems with my pcs before, so im quite the n00b...thanks again.

 

That is almost certainly head parking, and not HDD failure. The first models of Seagate's 5400.6 drives were pretty loud on this (one of my first ones did that - sounding like a broom over the floor [swish, swish] every 10 seconds).

Your Seagate HDD is the newer 5400.7 series, but W7 has increased the aggressiveness of the power and HDD management. You might be able to alter the settings in either BIOS or W7 power management to always on, but other Windows users will have to comment on how to best look at that; the only MS models I still have in the house are XP. W7 also does a lot of automatic drive indexing and defrag in the background when the system is under lower load (which is totally different from previous OS releases), and that is a good fit for the sound's timing that you describe.

 

thats such a huge relief, thanks. how do i set W7 power management to always on? i tried going in advanced settings but didnt see an option for it. (would it be processor power management? if so, what percentage should it be set at?) thanks.