I have a 1 year old HP Pavillion laptop that just started making a grinding/clicking at startup. Is this a sign of hard drive failure?
Yep, the hard drive is probably fried. Save all the files you don't want lost ASAP. If it is still under warranty take it to an HP authorized shop and have the drive replaced. If it's out of warranty don't worry, Hard Drives are extremely easy to install in a lapper. Go to the HP website and it will have easy instructions. Usually just two or three screws on the underside and the hard drive will pop right out. Take the old HD (or the make/model/serial # of the laptop) to Tiger Direct on Capital or check out Amazon. Make sure you have the disks and license info for any software such as MS Office that you'll need to re-load.
Could possibly be. Without hearing it for myself, I couldn't be sure. But a clicking sound usually is the sign of a hard drive failure. It could also be a fan issue though, maybe while it is spinning up on power up, it could make a grinding noise. Cheapest thing to try (and always good to do anyway), get a can of compressed air, and while the laptop is running, shoot it in all the vents on the back, bottom, and side of the laptop. You will probably see a ton of dust come out. If the sound goes away, that was it. If not, you should be able to narrow it down as coming from the fan or hard drive. Here is some great bare-metal backup software I always recommend to everyone. http://rebit.com/products/rebit-5/ - $49 if you already have a large USB drive to use, if not, they sell it on a USB drive for about $189 with the software - http://rebit.com/products/rebit-hard-drives/. Either way, if the hard drive goes and you have Rebit, you just replace the drive and restore from your backup. Everything (Windows, Programs, and files) will be back to the way they were. Best part, you don't need to know anything about computers to use it. Just plug in the USB drive for an hour or two once a week, or every day if you can, and it will be backed up. You can get a replacement hard drive for about $90 if that is what fails eventually - Amazon Link for 500GB laptop drive. Most people can replace it themselves, it's just a couple screws and pop old one out and new one in. If it's the fan, that is cheap, but you will probably need to take it to someone to replace, but luckily the fan is usually only about $20 or so plus labor.
You'd be lucky if it were the fan, but, it sounds like the hard drive. To tell which one it may be, locate the fan breather holes (you'll see the fan thru the holes) and then the hard drive door (it has a symbol that looks like 3 stacked cd's) on the bottom. Hold a hand under the laptop on each location and have someone power it on. You should feel the vibration from the culprit. If you don't have the disks that came with it to reload your operating system on a "new hard" ..... CREATE A COMPLETE O/S RESTORE DISK SET NOW!!!! It's in your program list under "HP". You'll need 5 or 6 CD's (or) 1 to 2 DVD's before you start.
Fan replacement ain't cheap! It means breaking it down to it's farthest point of disassembly. Every component and every screw is removed. Remove the mobo and flip it over to get at the fan and heat sink assembly on the Pavilion series. You're looking at 1.5 to 2 hours labor cost. It'll be cheaper if the hard drive failed. Like you said, 2 to 4 screws, they can do that themselves. With all the heat problems HP laptops have, I don't know why they don't put an "access door" in the lower case over the fan assembly? I just fixed an HP DV6900 series with the Nvidia video chipset failure. I actually drilled a series of 1/8" holes in the lower case under the video chipset and CPU to add more ventilation after the resolder. It won't unsolder itself from the board again!!
