NP8662 harddrive clicking

I'm using a seagate 7200.3 320gb hd, on vista 64bit OS and I've just noticed that when watching video or playing cod4 + cod5, there's a low clicking sound from the hd from time to time, which causes a 1-2 sec stuttering. I use vlc as the player and tried both normal avi's and some 1080p mkv's, they both stutter for 1-2 sec with the clicking sound. The same thing also happens with the above games except l4d, where I still hear that sound from time to time but there's no stuttering. I haven't been able to test this with other games yet.

The clicking sound also occurs when I'm on the desktop, browsing etc. Although I'm not sure, this also seems to affect my typing.

I have the latest matrix storage (8.9) and the chipset drivers. I've also done almost every vista tweak to lower the hd temp. I thought my hd temperatures were fine(50-51 idle, 59-60 at load) until I turned off the nc2000 cooler and tried playing l4d. When I quited the game I found that the hd temp went up to 63-64.
So what do you guys make of these, a failing harddrive or smt else?

 

It's the drive itself. Firmware update can fix it, but there's none for it.

 

Run a SMART check on it (something like HDDHealth, or Everest) and check the health of the hard drive. If it's clicking during load, it could be failing. Seagates *do* click normally, but it's more pronounced when idle (the HDD heads move around to prevent getting stuck or something similar), but they're also noisier when they seek. It sort of depends what exact noise you're hearing; a failing hard drive is sort of a "clink/clunk" (sort of like a tiny hammer hitting metal, instead of an even clicking noise).

Are you using Vista/win7? They preload a lot of stuff into memory during the first 15-20 minutes of playing that causes a lot of hard drive seeking (and could be why you're stuttering).

 

Well to be honest I'm not sure if what I hear is called "clicking". I've listened to a few failing hd sounds for comparison and I can tell it's nothing like those sounds. I'm on Vista 64 and disabled all those services mentioned in the vista tweak guides. The stuttering seems to be periodic so it doesn't happen only during the first 15-20 mins.

 

Yeah, get a SMART status on the hard drive and check for background processes as well - antivirus/firewall/anything else, and turn off stuff like active antivirus background scanning, etc.

 

SMART report from everest says everything's ok. I'm not running an antivirus/firewall other than vista's own.