HDD rattleing

I've currently got an IDE/ATA Western Digital hard drive that creates this rattling noise whenever it is being accessed, do all drives do this? Because every hard drive I own does this, which is several WD drives, a Maxtor or two, Quantum fireball (still working after >6 years), and a IBM travelstar (20GB so its not a DeathStar). If all HDDs do this, is there a way to silence/quite it?

Note: Its not a noise that would be made when the HDD is dieing, as most if not all the HDDs have done it since day one. I say most because I am not old enough to remember day one on the 6GB Fireball.

I'd check to see if the screws that mount the hard drive in the case are not loose. If they are not, try adding some rubber washers to dampen the vibrations...

Its kind of like a click, ONLY when its being accessed, when the drive is mostly idle it doesn't make a noise, but when I am transferring files, virus scanning etc. it makes the noise. I do not think it is vibration.

If it's a click, I'd run some diagnostics on it and see if there's something wrong with the drive...

And backup your data...

Is obviously normal becuase:
1. the noise is in sinc w/ the HDD acess LED
2. the drives have done it since day 1, and on this drive its been 2 years.

It could be nothing to worry about then. It could be when the hard is searching for something or maybe it needs a nice defrag... I wouldn't worry about it... I could not tell you if my drives do it because my Seagate is dead quiet and the HDD leds on my case do not work.

Not worrying, just trying to find HDD's that don't make this annoying noise.

It will be pretty hard to find a dead silent HD, but Seagates, according to user reviews and online noise comparison/reviews, are the quietest you can get.

i have a 80gb western digital se that made the same sound. mine used to make that continously clicking sound randomly while the computer was idle. however, i think the sound has gone away now that its mounted correctly. it was previously just hanging off the side of the computer.