Originally Posted by atiVidia
if the hard drive is vibrating that much, it shouldnt be working at all.
consider this: the read/write head would be the size of the empire state building, and the platter would be the land the building rests on, scaled to a respective size. flip the building upside down and have it hover a few millimeters over the ground. this is how close the r/w head is while over the drive (when scaled down, its only a few nanometers). any heavy vibration originating from the drive, like what you are describing, would cause the head to crash into the platter, permanently damaging the disk. this is why i could swear to you that its NOT the hard drive. if it was, id get it RMAed ASAP.