Lacie D2 Extreme Hard Drive Options

[camarao]

I've just bought this Lacie D2 Extreme 250gb and I find it noisy or perhaps it's not in good conditions.
It is connected to the PC via USB 1. ( I will connect it to a Powerbook next week )
I can hear a kind of fan ( or maybe is the drive rotating. Is it suposed to be always rotating ? )which makes an high pitch noise .
And I can hear some strange noises like some metal thing is scratching the case. This happens sometimes (as an example,this happens when I select all the folders in the drive and then right-click in properties ) . Is this normal ? Everywhere I read it says this drive is silent but mine is not.

[camarao]

I've just bought this Lacie D2 Extreme 250gb and I find it noisy or perhaps it's not in good conditions.
It is connected to the PC via USB 1. ( I will connect it to a Powerbook next week )
I can hear a kind of fan ( or maybe is the drive rotating. Is it suposed to be always rotating ? )which makes an high pitch noise .
And I can hear some strange noises like some metal thing is scratching the case. This happens sometimes (as an example,this happens when I select all the folders in the drive and then right-click in properties ) . Is this normal ? Everywhere I read it says this drive is silent but mine is not.

The hard drive is always spinning, yes. There is also a fan. The "skritch" sound you hear is the drive heads accessing the data. that is normal. If you hear a "thwack" sound, however, especially if it is repeating, that is the head slamming against the end of its travel and that is not normal.

I think I can hear the "thwack" as you say, but can you describe this word a bit more ? I couldn't find it in the dictionary.

The noise I hear it seems like something is touching the metal case. I can also hear the disk reading but that is very , very low volume, almost silent .