Sony FW hard drive noise after win 7 install?

okay so i have the sony VGN-FW463J/B, and I was running the vista 64 bit home premium OS that came pre-installed on it. I then loaded win 7 RC over it (not the clean install) so it had all that sony garbage on it still... so i said "oh whatever, i'll just wait until the sony drivers come and and i'll do a clean install then.
so oct 22nd comes around and i put in my win 7 professional 64bit disc and install win 7. and here's what i did:
installed the OS
installed ATI drivers
Installed any windows updates it could find and that was about it.

i also installed the Alps® Pointing Device Driver
and the Sony® Firmware Extension Parser Device Driver
and so i thought that was probably all i needed. and of course i'm wrong. for some reason i believe the hard drive has started to make a noise. Remember on older desktops like back in 95, they'd make that grinding noise when they were "thinking"? well thats the sound my vaio is now making, and i cant make it go away. i've installed all these drivers and i don't know what controls that sound which i believe comes from the hard drive.

here's what i've installed to no avail:
VAIO® Launcher Software
Setting Utility Series
VAIO® Control Center Software
Intel® Chipset Driver
Intel® SATA Non-RAID Driver
Intel® SATA Driver Registry Patch

anyone have any ideas of what this could be caused by? i'd hate to have to go back vista to make that sound go away, but thats the only solution that i know that makes it stop. thanks!