I borrowed my cousin's Dell Vostro 1000 laptop which has a Seagate ST980811AS hard drive with firmware 3.CDE. I noticed that often something inside the computer makes a plink sound. I wondered if it was a cooling fan switching on and off though usually that sounds different. Core Temp and SpeedFan showed me that a fan switching on and off wasn't making the sound. The sound must be coming from the hard drive even though Windows' Power Properties are set to never switch off the hard disk.

I'm one of those people who will try to verify what they already think is certainly true so I tried to find a little program that can show me when the drive's heads are parked while Windows XP is running but I didn't find one. Then I found the manual for the drive at http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/notebook/momentus/5400_3/100398882d.pdf and noticed the list of power management modes on page 10 which is page 16 by Adobe Reader's count. Is there a program that can monitor and display the power management mode that a hard drive is in or will soon go in to and display that on screen in Windows XP?

While I was searching for info about this I noticed a lot of people have anxiety about hard drive heads parking and unparking too often. I just want to verify where the sound is coming from. I expect that if it is the drive that is making the plink sound then it probably is doing what it is supposed to be doing but I still want to know if I am hearing what I think I am hearing.

Check SMART status load/unload count?

I checked the drive's SMART data in SpeedFan earlier but I guess I didn't know what I was seeing. I checked again and it looks like the Raw column of the Load Cycle Count row contains a hexadecimal number which increases by 1 each time I hear the plink sound. Did I find the correct number to watch?

Actually, yes.