The beeps of a 7200 rpm 500 GB disks in the Macbook Pro 2009

A reader drew our attention to a problem that he met on his Macbook pro 2009 equipped with a 500 GB hard drive running at 7200 rpm. This disk regularly ceases functioning (10 to 15 times per day), causing the appearance of the multicoloured wheel, and emits what one can qualify as a beep. A video posted on Youtube allows us to hear it (around the fourth second, it is not loud).

After digging a bit on the Web, one finds that he is not the only one to encounter this problem which seems related to the disk (made by Seagate), since it has the same behaviour in a PC under Windows 7. We are not completely sure, but we guess that during these short pauses the disc makes a calibration of its heads. It is a system used by the manufacturers to optimize the operation of their disks due to the temperature, since when the temperature rises, the plates dilate and are thus thicker.
A disk running at 7200 rpm heats more, thus this phenomenon is much more frequent and detectable by the user.