A couple months ago, I built a new system which included a Hitachi P7K500 SATA HD. It died a few weeks ago, had to RMA and the replacement drive finally arrived yesterday. This new drive is having a different problem that I've never seen before. Whenever the hard drive is being accessed, it is making a pretty loud, high-pitched squeeling / whining noise. This is not your usual HD noise; it like the sound when your ears are ringing. So, I'm probably going to have to RMA this one as well and wait a few more weeks for the next replacement (since Hitachi inexplicably does NOT do advanced drive replacement). Seems obvious to me this clearly is not a new drive they sent, rather a faulty, refurbished drive. However, I figured I would check over here and see, has anyone else ever had this problem? Any ideas to take care of this on my own? I tried adjusted the position of the drive, just to make sure it wasn't vibrations causing the noise, but it's definately coming from inside the drive. I imagine that if this is the case, there's nothing to be done but send it back. But if anyone does have any kind of explanations or tricks, I'd love to hear them P.S. Never Buy Hitachi !! No advanced replacement program, slow turnaround time for replacement, and then after waiting for weeks, they send me another busted drive. I tried to save a few bucks while building my new system ... terrible decision, will never buy from them again!

i agree with your assessment that the drive is bad, or is going bad. is the data you have on the disk backed up somewhere else?

Yeah, it's still backed up ... I haven't copied all my data back over to the new drive, anticipating that I would have to send it back anyway