XPS 1340 clicking sound. SATA drive?

Every so often, my laptop will make a sort of clicking sound. It's coming from the left side of the laptop. I'm pretty sure it's the hard drive. The sound is kind of like a water droplet then a pause for a second or 2 then another click. The light on the bottom left becomes solid when this happens. Sometimes it won't make the sound for a few hours, and sometimes it will do it a couple times a minute. When the sound occurs, what ever i'm typing won't come up for a few seconds (until the 2nd click), or if i'm scrolling on a web page, I can't continue scrolling for a few seconds.

I see on dell's website that there is a firmware update for the Samsung HM400LI 2.5 5400 S2 HDD. Isn't this for a 5400 RPM HDD?

My specs are:
Dell Xps 1340
P9600 2.66 GHz
4gb ram
256mb Nvidia GeForce 9500M
500gb SATA HDD 7200rpm

I have all the latest drivers (except for the HDD firmware)+ A07 BIOS. My CPU runs about 45C average while using non-demanding applications, and it's undervolted by .1V on the 10x multiplier.

Is that the correct firmware to fix my problem? Are my temperatures normal for being undervolted?

 

the clicking is probably the first sign of the hard disk going bad. back it up
and call dell and get a new one

hold the computer to your ear during the clicking, see if u can hear if the drive is working on 1 spot of the disk... ???

another possibility i guess is that maybe theres something wrong with the freefall sensor/firmware?? and maybe your not hearing a disk error, but the drive parking??

rant section
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a lot of people i mean a lot of people like to post stupid messages about the need to 'low level format' the hard disks. since the early 1990s or so, there is no such thing as a end user low level format. all you are doing is writing zeros to the disk, you are not actually formatting anything.

all hard drives are formatted at the factory. they come with a certain number of spare sectors, which when a bad sector is found, the hard disk automatically remaps the data to the spare sectors. this process is invisible to the operating system ( and the user ). when the spare sectors become full, then you start experiencing clicking and disk errors.

it sounds normal not to be able to type while the disk is tying up the interrupts working on coming back or correcting an error

 

Thanks. I'll call Dell.