You have no way of knowing this unless you have recordings of the sounds before and after the updates. Download the debug_logs.tar and look at the smartdata log file (…\system info\log)to see the number of hours and the reallocated sector ct and reallocated event count. The average lifetime of a hard disk drive is 2.5 years (samples size is in the tens of thousands), the warranty on the MCH is 2 years.
Any time you hear unfamilar noises from a hard disk, the first thing to consider is to ask whether there is a recent backup (through the USB port is the fastest).
What has changed in the MCH firmware is a newer version of Debian Linux and Samba is now running on the MCH and the result is an improvement as long as the hardware is not malfunctioning. This has been shown in another post:
