NEW Dell 8600 80 gig HD making tapping NOISE

I got a brand new Dell 8600 with 80 gig Hitachi hard disk.
the thing constantly makes a tapping noise every 1 sec. VEry very annoying. Has anyone found similar problems.

Thinking of exchanging or returning Dell. their quality seem to be vad compared to others. What are your opinions?

I also applied firmware microcode patch. No use. The tap sound continues.

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/devices.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4M_8600&category=26&os=WW1&osl=EN

I tried vaious things, What is your suggestions. Also anyone know how to disable S.M.A.R.T from BIOS as something is reading/accessing hard disk continuously. People in Dell forum suggest it could be hard disk park problems. But I thought Dell was better than some other vendors.... As you can see I am really disappointed with Dell purchase

Any loyal Dell customers who want me to tilt me otherwise ...

 

Hitachi could also be the problem, a bad hard drive is not a terribly uncommon thing. You'll need to speak to tech support and see if you can send the hard drive back or if you need to send the entire machine to have it checked out...I'm sure they'll want the entire machine.

I had an IBM ThinkPad T23 a couple of years back and went through two Hitachi hard drives that simply failed after 6 months. So as I said, give the Dell tech support a shot and don't write them off unless they can't help you with the problem, you'll have to be patient and prepared to not have your notebook for a month though I am guessing.

 

If that is the case I will return Dell and forget about them.
What kind of QA do they have? Guys in India doing it. ..

I will head to Costco and get a real one.