I am having a problem with the harddrive making almost constant high-pitch noise in Windows 7 and 8, and it is really annoying. The noise comes just after booting into Windows 7 or 8 - there is no noise when installing, nor is there any noise in Windows XP or Linux. I have tried two different harddrives, and the same happens. So it must be a driver issue, but installing the latest AMD Chipset Driver (AHCI SATA driver) for Windows 8 results in error and windows repair.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx

Motherboard: asus m3a78 emh hdmi (AMD 780G) latest bios (1302)
Harddrives: WD Caviar GP (WD5000AACS) and WD Caviar BLU (WD10EZEX) 

Any suggestions?

It's from a high frequency coil in a switch mode power circuit on your mainboard, the sound is resonance from a coil. An easy way to fix this is to find the coil, and coat it with RTV silicone.

Link to wikis on the sound it makes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coil_noise

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barkhausen_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetostriction

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.

Physics? Ha! This is clearly magic and devilry at work. Prepare firewood! We have witches to burn!

Senior Engineering Technician (AEET).

Thx for your reply. I know switch mode power circuits make a high frequency noise, but the noise is coming from the harddrive itself and like on-off-on-off constantly (both when idling and reading/writing). What I find strange is the noise is only there in Windows 7 & 8 - present after a few seconds when starting up.

I have also tried to move one harddrive (the GP) to another system running Windows 7. But it makes no noise when running as a second harddrive with that motherboard.