"Swishy" Noise from Hard Drive

[Chandler]

Hi,
My laptop's hard drive frequently makes a noise, but it's kind of hard to describe.  It's a metallic swishy, scrapy noise (if that makes any sense) - not clicks.

It is noticeable because the drive it totally silent otherwise and it only seems to occur when the drive is inactive.

I've downloaded an IDE/ATAPI Bus Utlitization Monitor, and whenever this noise is being made, the bus usage on the Primary IDE Channel goes to 100%.

Could this be head parking?  Most utilties report that power management is enabled for the hard drive, but unfortunately there is no way of disabling it in the BIOS setup.

For reference the drive is a Hitachi DK23DA-40 and I'm running Windows XP.

[query]

Most drives have wear-leveling algorithms that prevent the heads from prolonged spinning over the same spot on the drive for an extended period of time - they're controlled internally to the drive, by the controller on the logic board.  I have the same drive in an Inspiron 8200 and it does the same thing, mostly when it's spinning idle.

I checked mine out with the Drive Fitness Test (what used to be from IBM, but now works with Hitachi drives as well since the IBM-Hitachi drive merger) and everything tests out OK, but the noise is still there.

[Chandler]

OK thanks.  I've checked the drive and it passed.  I've just being thinking and "chirping" would probably have been a better description.