Well, let's start at the beginning. A while back I bought an 80 gig Maxtor drive, 7200 rpm, ATA/133 blah blah. Few months after I started using it, whenever I would access large amounts of data, the drive would make "access" or "Seek" noises, if you can imagine what im saying, during the whole data access. But, it's been faithful to me thus far for about a year, with the exception of those noises..

Today, I picked up two 250 gig Maxtor drives, 7200 rpm, 8meg cache, ata/133. I put one in my computer, went into XP, used the Disk Management to activate the drive, format it into a Dynamic disk (just like the 80 gig and my primary 30 gig) and format it...I dumped my music files and videos over to the new 250 gig HD, and rebooted to get a clean start. Immediately when I went into the Music folder (containing in the area of 1,500 files) the folder displayed nothing for about 4 seconds, during which the drive was making those SAME noises, but louder and more obvious this time, VERY irritating (Mind you, these are BRAND NEW DRIVES). My 30 gig drive, is silent as a mouse, never had an issue with it (forgot to mention, all drives are NTFS) Now, while the noise is bothersome, and it somehow seems to be causing the access to slow down while it chunks about...Im more worried about coming to the conclusion of whether or not the drives are dead or messed up or what's goin on (Yes both drives make this noise, one is internal, the other I put into a USB 2.0 enclosure box) Is this normal for such large capacity drives trying to access huge amounts of data? Is this something I should be worried about? I need to figure this out before my return policy is up, the last thing I want, is this beautiful 500 gigabyte storage capacity...failing me in a few months down the road, causing me to lose the last 7 or 8 years of my life's data on them. I tried turning of search indexing, but that did nothing at all. And lastly, every once in a while, during the computer's idle moments or low access moments, XP will somehow access the drive (Which is alright) but it makes that freakin noise! Sounds reminiscient of my 486/50's 4600rpm HD back in the day...I also have a friend who has the exact same drive as me, and says it's utterly quiet, even when accessing huge amounts of information. Anyone have any ideas??

If I understand you correctly, no hard drive no matter how large should make the kind of noise that you are describing. Better replace it, like yesterday!

Im not quite sure though how BOTH of these hard drives could have the "EXACT" same noises and problems though, what are the odds of that? and when I picked them out behind the glass case, i even took one from the front and the one in the back, making the chances of similar problems even smaller...anyone else have any opinions on this dilemma?

I would suggest disabling the "System Restore" function, reboot and then run DEFRAG of all drives. Then enable System Restore if you want it and see if that helps.

When the OS goes to open each of those files, it has to seek between the file system tables and the header of each of the files. This seeking can make a lot of noise. It sounds like you have disabled disk caching and read-ahead functions of the disk file system.

just a question on your system specs...

why do you have one of the slowest ddr with a 400 mhz fsb cpu?
and 1 gig at that

At maxtor support, search for "noisy drive"

You should get about 173 documents including the following from Maxtor;
---------------

Normal sounds include:

Whining noise during drive spin-up.
Regular clicking or tapping sounds during drive access.
Hard clicks when the drive heads park.
Abnormal noises include:
High-pitched whining sound can be an indication of abnormal function.
Noises can be caused by mounting issues. This is due to either a high frequency vibration in the mounting hardware, or a potential drive failure.
Repeated, regular tapping, grinding or beeping.
Maxtor hard drives do not contain audio speakers. Some failure mechanisms may make a regular repeating beep from the computer's internal speaker. This may or not be hard drive related. Check your system documentation for an explanation of system beep codes. If a drive failure is possible, it is always important to make an immediate backup.
Troubleshooting noise issues:

Run PowerMax for ATA drives or SCSIMax for SCSI drives. PowerMax and SCSIMax will determine if the drive is malfunctioning or defective.

If the tests did not detect any errors try disconnecting the hard drive from ONLY the data cable. If the noise stops, check the physical installation of the hard drive.

Remove the hard drive from the mounting brackets and place the hard drive securely on an insulated surface. If noise stops after the hard drive is removed from the mounting brackets, check cables for twisting, warping and insert gasket washers between the mounting brackets and drive screws.

808

Hmm, I doubt my ram has anything to do with it, plus I spent so much money upgrading the rest of the system, and didn't feel like spending another $120-$180 upgrading my ram just to notice another 1,500 - 2,000 points in synthetic benchmarks (3dmark)

I read that bit on Maxtor's website, and I checked the things it told me to, and to no avail. I also made sure i had drive caching turned on.

Sound clip of the noise: http://home.ptd.net/~matt3046/Noises.mp3

Sorry about the clicking, it's my mouse :D
The first group of noise you hear is me accessing my music folder with exactly 1,790 files in it, right after a fresh restart of my system. The second group of noise, is me doing a *.* search on the 250 gig drive (only about 20,000 files on the drive)