Is this hard drive 'ticking' an optional Service?

[poachedeggs]

I've bought a 2001 Thinkpad and fitted a healthy newer 20gb hard
drive. The activity I hear is fairly constant but isn't the click of
death. It didn't occur while running Linux so I'm thinking it may be
related to a Service I don't necessarily need, or the swap file maybe.
It has a regular rhythm at clock seconds speed:

tick, tick, tick, tickticktick, tick, tick, tick, tickticktick, tick,
tick, tick, tickticktick

I did try one boot with the swap file switched off but there was no
change - I'd thought maybe it was writing to the hard drive more often
that it would if it wasn't a 900mhz/512mb (maxed) machine.

I've used online guides to turn off all non-essential services,
selected the Windows Classic theme and switched off some other
effects. It's not Firefox memory leak at work either as I've just put
Chrome on with the identical tick.

It's otherwise great and preferable for me to new, gaudy and cheap
looking laptops but ideally I'd get rid of this tick.

Thanks.

[Rob]

Make sure indexing is turned off, disable autoplay on your optical
drive (to see if that is the cause, eject the tray and leave it
open - if the ticking stops, you are done.)

If all else fails, use Process Monitor (note:different to Process
Explorer)
--
Rob