PowerBook G3 hard drives may emit "cranking" noise while pausing

Several readers report of a problem with Lombard PowerBook G3 hard drive, which makes a "cranking" noise, as if the heads were parking and unparking. While the noise occurs, the PowerBook freezes for up to a second. There are also reports of this occurring repeatedly for up to 20 seconds. Any keystrokes or mouse clicks made during the cranking are lost. James Sentman notes that this makes it impossible to use the PowerBook for real-time activity such as digital recording/sequencing or video capture. He also said that other symptoms include jerky USB mouse movement and one second interruptions in playing audio CDs with the latest sound manager installed. Searching Apple's PowerBook G3 Tech Exchange forum for the word "crank" brings up 50 posts on the subject in the past two weeks, including this long thread. Apple posts refer to a replacement drive as a likely solution, but Sentman says he has had 3 different drives in the PowerBook and the problem still continues.