New drive making weird noises while running

I just picked up a Dell Latitude with a 3TB drive, and it’s making this really weird noise:
https://vocaroo.com/i/s0YTAPSQPeXP
I recorded this on my phone, so the quality isn't great—just ignore all that background noise, that's just the fans and general computer hum. 😁

Does anyone have any clue if the drive is failing, or is this just how it's supposed to sound?

Check out the drive status using this https://osdn.net/projects/crystaldis...N/A.exe/ tool... By the way, what kind of case are you running? I'm curious if the hard drive is mounted on a flat surface.

It really doesn't matter if the drive is brand new out of the box; it could easily be a dud right from the start. I actually ended up returning a whole new laptop myself just because it came with a faulty drive.

You should probably run some diagnostics with a utility program to check the read speeds, look for bad sectors, and see what else might be going on under the hood. At the end of the day, you’ve got a multi-year warranty on the hardware, so there isn't much to lose. If it dies on you, just file a claim.

Larry Ortiz5 said:Try using this https://osdn.net/projects/crystaldis...Info7_7_0.exe/ tool to check the actual health of the hard drive. Also, just curious—is the case level? Is the drive sitting on a flat surface?

The drive is on a flat surface and the case is fine.
I'll give that program a shot later. I actually pulled the drive out of the case already, and I'm planning to drop it off at Best Buy on Monday so they can take a look and see what's going on with it.