So after some reading, I think the strange sounds in my hard drive are in fact automatic head parking, but I'm not absolutely sure. I downloaded a program called HDTune to take a look at the load cycles, which are supposed to be indicative of a problem if they're abnormally high for the amount of time the drive has been active. I've been using my new PC for about a month now, and the load cycles are at 1669. I've read that depending on the drive, a lifetime amount is often in the low hundreds of thousands, so that should give me many years of use, hopefully. Most people who've commented on the subject were alarmed that their cycles were in the tens of thousands within weeks. Is 1669 normal for about a month or less of use? Keep in mind that most of that was just toying with the thing while I completed the process of backing up my old PC, with the thing only being on for a couple hours a day at most. I've only started using this thing officially in the past week.
Edit: I'm not really sure, but do these programs have access to data for the LTD of the drive? I would hope that number is all the cycles since the drive has been first active. I was watching it for a bit, and hit update immediately after one of the squeaks, and it indeed increased the load count by one.
Edit 2: I guess I figured out the answer to my first edit after finding the power on hours count, which is 106, with now 1672 load cycles.
