New Constant Hard Drive Noise

I bought a Dell Vostro 1700 perhaps a month ago. The hard drive is whatever stock 120 gb 5400 HD it ships wiht. For the first three weeks or so of use, it was amazing quiet. For the past week, the noise from the hard drive is persistent and annoying.

It's not ridiculously loud, just the regular noise from a hard drive spinning. But I'm obsessive compulsive about this kind of stuff, and it's decidedly different from how it was a week ago. At first, I thought it was the fan just being on 24/7 for some reason, which annoyed me but I was busy enough I didn't investigate. Today I paid attention, and it's definitely the hard drive doing it. Nothing I'm doing in terms of computer operation has changed.

Is this normal? For the hard drive to suddenly just be louder over such a short period of usage time? I repeat, it's not some odd or unusual noise, it's just the noise one would associate with a spinning hard drive. But I swear it's louder now than it was a week ago. The entire machine was whisper quiet before, and now the hard drive noise is ever present. I don't ever play music while using this notebook, so I highly doubt it's just a case of me noticing a noise "just now".

 

Hard drives can be noisy. If you think it's that bad, call Dell and get it replaced.