Clicking noise from hard drive when it's booting

[cynicaldev]

I haven't' been using my laptop much but when I turned it on yesterday, there was some sort of a clicking sound coming from the left side of the laptop, where the hard drive is located. It only makes the sound during boot. Initially, I ran the quick S.M.A.R.T test using "diskdrive get status" in cmd. The result was ok, so I ran Crystal Disk Info and the health status came out as "good."

Any idea what could be causing the problem? I've been running my laptop on AC because its battery is dead and so has the motherboard battery.

 

[ingtar33]

no vents? not many moving parts other then the hard drive and cooling fans. if the drive is returning healthy, then your cooling fan is the next most likely part.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there cynicaldev,

The first thing you need to do is to back up the crucial data stored on the drive.
Apart from that, I would also say that as the drive's S.M.A.R.T. status is good, then I guess something else makes that noise. It is highly possible that this could be caused by a fan.
If the drive is under warranty, you can just contact the manufacturer.

D_Know_WD

 

[cynicaldev]

Thank you for the replies. It's not under warranty, in fact it's couple of years old. This is an Alienware m14x R1, but after all these years I never had any issues with it other than battery failure. It could be possible that it's caused by the fan because I haven't cleaned the vents in a couple of months. I'll probably do that and let you guys know the outcome.