Inspiron 1520 Hard Drive Noise

Let me just cut straight to the chase. My brand new inspiron 1520 HDD produces a continuous flickering/clicking/scraping/ticking noise, and it is so annoying. Every second or so the harddrive light flickers and makes the noise in sync with it. (it varies depending on what I'm doing, for example right now it is flickering about every second, producing the noise). I mean when ppl are talking or when i'm listening to something, or when the computer fan goes on you can't here the HDD noise. but it is very annoying in a quiet room. Oh and when I play games it isn't an issue.
My setup is:
2.2 T7500
7200 rpm HDD (Hitachi, which i hear is the loudest, it just had to be me eh)
1 GB ram
Vista Premium
I've turned off indexing, etc, closed extra logging/background programs, downloaded NHC and changed the performance setting to performance, and the acoustic level to quiet. Now I have to say the noise was much worse before I did all these things. It wouldn't just flicker, it would stay on most of the time. Anyway even though its reduced, it is still there. Am I being too picky? Because my friend has a dell 6400 with a hitachi drive and sitting in class i can't hear his. So is the....
HOLY FRICK!
k guess what just happened now as I typed, my hardrive started flickering lots, and then suddenly my screen went to blackscreen, then flashed back immediately, and then went back to black screen, then normal again, then black screen with a lil white flashing "_" and then came back immediately. K now I'm just scared.
So I was gonna say is my problem:
-Vista premium
-1GB ram isn't enough and I've heard HDD sometimes is used when there is insufficient ram
-Hitachis are all like this
-7200rpm HDDs are noisy
-this never crossed my mind but the whole black screen flashing just totally scared me...faulty hardrive on brand new laptop?

now a whole new question...what just happened? could it be i've had it plugged into the wall and turned on for the past 4 and a half hours?


Sorry for this very long and bothersome thread. It's just that my dad ordered this laptop through dell US and brought it across the border to Canada. and it would just be a hassle for everyone, so I wanna make sure nothing's broken.

 

oops i just realized that the black screen flashing thing might have been due to the fact I was doing a nvidia 8600GT driver update in the background. I had windows searching for driver updates and I kinda forgot I was doing that. So would a driver update cause a screen flash? Considering its the video driver? Thanks again (sry i'm such a newb)

 

Yes driver updates will cause your screen to momentarily go blank or flash few times. As for the HDD noise, all HDDs emit an audible noise when accessing, some louder than others (especially 7200RPM disks). I think you are being too picky about it. Only Solid State Disks (SSD) operate with zero noise.

 

I have a 7200rpm drive and its dead silent all the time.

 

download Notebook Hardware Control and make sure its the dell Version. Then go to the Hard Disk tab and set the Advance Power Management to Max Performance and Acoustic Management to quiet. The noise will go away, it did with me. Its just the heads parking.

Or go here and follow the steps

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=168425

 

My HD is pretty noisy, but Ive gotten used to it. Some HDs are just louder then others. All the Western Digitals Ive had are dead quiet, while the Maxtors sound like ice crushing machines. You should be fine. I hope I am too.

 

You see I'm not too much worried about the laptop crashing. It's just a brand new laptop and I guess my expectations were too high. Guess I'll just have to get used to it and if my fellow classmates can't handle it, well get over it eh. See I did the NHC thing and I didn't really notice much of a difference. Will the change be instantaneous? Was your hard drive Hitachi?