Haven't been flight simming for a while because the experience isn't all that great with stutters and tics. I notice when I load a complex aircraft or scenery from the main screen, fsx freezes for about 5-10 seconds and I can hear my hard drive spool up and come to life followed by a buzz. Is this something normal, or did I choose another cheap drive?

You have the power saving feature to turn off your hard drive in Windows. It has nothing to do with the drive quality.