It sorta sounds like someone sticking a toothpick in a CPU fan and just barely touching the baldes. Its not the fan ...its definitely the HD. Is that the death knell? It only lasts a few seconds, but gets more ominous every week. How much time do I have? :cry:
That sound could be the stepper motor making the noise and could be indicitive of a pending failure. Hard to tell without actually hearing it first hand but what I have found over the years is that the PC user is pretty used to what is "normal" when it comes to sounds. Anything out of the ordinary, especially when it involves the hard drive, should be treated as suspect and you should be proactive about it. A good backup should definitely be in your future. Also you could try running Scandisk or chkdsk to determine if there are any identifiable problems. Backup. Backup. Backup!!
I second that motion. If the clicking gets worse and the drive completely fails , it is going to cost you alot more money for a back up then just taking it to your local PC pro.
I agree, if it is the drive making the noise, it won't last much longer. The best way to check the drive for sure is to go to the manufacturers web site and download their diagnostic program. It will tell you the health status on the drive. If it's a proprietary PC ( HP, Dell, Compaq ...etc) and you don't have the recovery disk you really need to "clone" that drive quickly if you don't want to puchase an Operating System along with a new hard drive. If you haven't created a recovery CD on the PC you still have one try at it. Read your help files. If your not sure how to do it, get help. They only give you one shot at it. You may be in luck on not having to pay for the new drive. Most drives manufactured after 2003 are warranted for 3 years. They have a simple return plan where you get the new one and then you send the old one back. This allows you time to copy the data. Check the date, model # & serial # on the drive and go to the website and look for the warranty link. DDRdan
