Macintosh: Internal HD Does Periodic Thermal Recalibration

My hard drive makes a whirring noise every now and then, even when I'm not doing anything.
Your computer is operating normally.

Macintosh internal hard drives perform a thermal recalibration approximately every few minutes whether the computer is being used or not. Thermal recalibration is a process that all hard drives use to properly position the read/write heads with the tracks of data on the disk.
Published Date: Feb 20, 2012