2012 Mac Mini Hard Drive Noise

I recently purchased a 2012 Mac Mini $799 base model.

I was a bit suprised that I could audibly hear the hard drive. I can tell it's normal operational noise from read/write/seek, but it's a bit in the treble range for a hard drive sound and I'm wondering if that's from the drive itself or the case design.

I'm wondering if people can tell me if this is normal? How quiet is your mini? My home office is very quiet so I can definitely hear the noise. I've had several people tell me their mini's are 'dead silent' but I'm wondering how much ambient noise exists in their environment. If this behavior of my machine is not normal I would like to return it sooner rather than later before I really start putting a lot of data onto it, but I also don't want to trade one problem for another, which has happened with some of my other Apple exchanged products.

Any help is greatly appreciated!