Clicking Noises

[shawn.h]

So for the past couple of months or so, I have had clicking noises coming from my Dell XPS M1330. It occurred sparingly at first, but became more and more repetitive. When these clicking noises occur, the computer temporarily freezes and resumes once the clicking noises has finished. In addition to these clicking nosies, grinding noises started happening as well, which really concerned me. These noises all seem to be coming out of the hard drive, so I called Dell Support and they promptly sent me a knew one. I just finished copying all of my old data onto the knew drive and lo and behold, the clicking noise starts again (granted it does not happen as often as it did before). Does anyone have any suggestions as to what it may be and/or how to fix it?

I have not made any hardware changes to the computer (except changing the hard drive as I stated earlier). I upgraded from Vista Home Premium 64 bit, but the problem existed in both Vista and Windows 7.

Here are my specs:
Dell XPS M1330
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
Pheonix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1. 10 A 15
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.5GHz (2 CPUs)
5GB RAM

 

[Slaymate]

I've had a few "new" hard drives that clicked and seemed to work for a while. It would be smart to just buy a new one. Dell probably sent you a drive that they hope will last you thru your warranty period. But I could be wrong.

 

[Ste]

Just make sure you have back ups of all important data.

And like slay said, you should call dell if its still under warranty and see what they can do..

Tell them it has started making loud noises and is sometimes unresponsive.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

I would one, write down the serial numbers and everything about both drives if possible, call dell, and tell them, it is VERY possible that they are going through a batch of bad drives.