M1530 hard drive crackling sound

Scroll down for short version

One week ago I received my new XPS M1530, after having read a couple of complaints from others such as a bad screen (dull colours) and bulging keyboards I was very happy to find that my XPS showed none of these flaws!

Unfortunately my joy ended soon, as I discovered the hard drive was making some sort of scratching / crackling noise (I don't really know how exactly to describe it, let alone in English)! After checking out several forums I contacted Dell and was immediately offered a replacement hard drive, which I received the next day. The mechanic (cannot find the exact English word ) didn't stay to install it, since I thought all I had to do was replace it and I would be good to go! But of course this hard drive made the same sounds!

During the 75 minutes on the phone with Dell we tried all sorts of stuff to figure out what the problem was, even putting pieces of paper on top of the hard drive to see if it was the contact that the hard drive made with the casing. When we couldn't figure out what the problem was Dell decided to replace the hdd again. This time the mechanic would stay for the installation however, to make sure the new hard drive wasn't faulty either.

So the mechanic arrived this morning and first checked out the old drive, of course when he was listening to it it didn't make any sounds – what are the odd's... After running some applications it started to make the sounds and the mechanic said that he thought it didn't sound right either. So he replaced the hard drive with a new one (the third) and started installing Vista. When the hard drive was active it didn't make any of the weird sounds so we both thought the problem was fixed, finally!

After installing Vista the sound still didn't return and I was very happy, then all of the sudden it started making the sound like crazy! Some people who heard the sound are telling me it's NORMAL so now I'm starting to believe that it might be... How else could three hard drives show the same problems (unless it's a fault in the laptop somehow).

Anyway, I made a recording of the sound. The microphone was placed pretty close to the laptop so the sound might be a bit distorted. The sound actually becomes a lot louder when I move the laptop around a little, lifting it up for example, which is what you'll mostly hear on the recording. The sound is pretty loud, I can clearly here it when I'm sitting behind my (rather noisy) desktop PC and the laptop is at the other side of the room.

Short version

My hard drive (which is actually the third Seagate 250GB 7200RPM hard drive that does this) is making some sort of scratching / static / crackling / short circuit sounds

WAV file in ZIP (0.5 MB)
This is a recording of the laptop booting into MediaDirect 3.5

Are these normal hard drive noises? Is anybody familiar with this problem and its causes and possible solutions?

I already tried the NHC hdd clicking noise fix and also changed the BIOS settings for the HDD to Quiet and Performance and disabled Windows Vista Indexing. The sound always stays the same though. It's definately not the clicking hard drive which annoys a lot of XPS owners.

Dell already mentioned that they would replace the laptop if they couldn't fix this problem, but I want to figure out what is causing it. Also I'm a bit reluctant about receiving a new laptop, since this one is kinda perfect (except for the hdd noise of course). Who knows what problems I might have with the next one

 

The crackling sound is definitely just the sound of it working ... it does it in my laptop but I can only really hear it when it is pretty quiet in my room ... when gaming and stuff it is inaudible. It does it in all hard drives (desktop or laptop) if you listen carefully. Don't worry about it, your machine is fine.

 

As I said, I started to get doubts myself as well but the sound is just so noisy! The fact that the latest drive worked for 2 hours without making the sound and then started to produce the sound just like the other two also make me suspicious...

The mechanic that replaced my hard drive also agreed that the noises it was making weren't "normal"... Unfortunately I don't have any XPS laptop around to compare it to

 

Try setting drive acoustics in your BIOS settings to "Quiet" and see if that helps. Otherwise, those sounds are perfectly normal.

 

Already tried that, but that didn't make any difference at all. So is it also normal that the sounds become twice as loud when the laptop is moved (even just a little bit)?

It still strikes me as odd that the hard drive didn't make any noise at all for almost 2 hours (apart from normal hdd noises that I heard when I put my ear to the laptop) and then suddenly starts making this annoying crackling sound

 

dude im getting the exact same sound as u, i've already been through one hard drive and ill probably try and get another.

mines a seagate too

i just moved my hard drive around and it does seemed to get a bit louder

 

If the sound increases when the laptop is moved then that sounds like something is loose in the hard drive. But the chances of 3 drives doing that?

 

I had the same whining/grating sound problem on an M1330 Fujitsu drive. I was getting a headache from the sound -- no joke. I had to turn on my stereo/aircon/TV just to muffle the sound until the replacement Seagate arrived. The sound did fluctuate when the drive was tilted or moved.

 

That's exactly why I started doubting myself.. I guess the responses are mixed as well – some people say it's normal behaviour while others say it's not. I suppose I'll go for the replacement laptop, lets hope that solves the annoying sound and doesn't bring along any new problems (considering my luck with these sort of things there will probably be some other problem )