Normal for laptop to make some occasional disk seeking noises?

[Xpred]

I just bought a laptop a few weeks ago (Gateway MT3707). It wasn't particularly the best nor great, but it was just what I needed for college. However, I noticed that during Windows loadup and opening of programs, there is heavy hard-drive seeking noise. It gets slightly annoying. Then after everything is loaded, the noise stops until you begin to open a lot of things excessively. The "Hard disk LED" light also blinks when this happens. Is this just me or normal? I've never had a laptop until now. Or maybe it's brand/model specific too?

The noise is just kind of annoying if you're in a very very quiet place (ex. library or something), but I guess if you're in the public where it's loud, it kind of dissipates with bg noise. It just everytime I turn on IE or do something than idling, the noise kind of starts to get in my way... maybe I'm just too noise-sensitive for the average user, heh.

 

[Brainonska511]

You probably just have a noisy hard drive. If you know the brand, you could go to the manufacturer's website and download their hard drive utility to see if you can put it into a quieter mode (but at the cost of reduced performance).

 

[steppinthrax]

While the laptop is making this noise put your ear to the laptop. If you hear a ping ping ping or a repetative seeking like your indicating it could be the drive is on it's way out. However from what your describing it sounds like the drive is on it's way out anyway.

 

[Xpred]

No ping ping sound. Just some regular seeking noise that I've heard from other laptops. I guess I just wasn't use to it. How can the laptop be on it's way out if I just bought it? :/