Hard-drive diagnostic program

Hi again, A program that I was sent long ago gave the following info for the drive I am thinking of: Read Hard Disk Parameters Copyright 1995, Sydex, Inc. All Rights Reserved. An AT controller was found For ESDI/IDE Drive 0: Cylinders 2358 Heads 16 Sectors/Track 63 Buffer Size 64K Total Sectors 2376864 Drive supports DMA Drive supports LBA Firmware Revision: 99C60LE7 Model Number: IBM-DPRA-21215 Serial Number: 1L47L4V2902 It is operated under DOS 5 and Windows 3.1. The drive does the same thing in Windows and in DOS. I don't know who has encountered the Commodore 1541 drive. Thise who have will recall the hammering noise it made at turn-on and also when it encountered a difficulty with a disk it was reading. The drive under consideration is, I think, doing the same thing. It periodically makes a noise that sounds like an impact. This noise is being encountered with increasing frequency; I wonder if the the drive is headed for a failure. I have other drives I can put in its place, if need be. I don't understand the reference to "popcorn"...what is the meaning here? Thanks, Kurt