Question Hard drive is making faint clicking sound ?

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TheSnowTiger117

Nov 27, 2024
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Hi,

I was just wondering if it is normal for a hard drive to make faint clicking noises ?

My computer usually makes two faint clicking sounds occasionally, usually when accessing the hard drive. I didn't notice this noise until I recently installed a new SSD and updated to Windows 11 from Windows 10. It is a Seagate HDD. I tried using Seatools and it said that the hard drive is fine. I tried recording the clicking sound, but accessing the HD involved clicking the mouse and the mouse clicking sound drowns out the faint clicking noise the HD makes. Other than these clicks there is no sign that the hard drive is failing. I can access video games installed on the HD and they work fine.

Should I be worried? If it made the clicking sound from the beginning then I wouldn't be worried, but because they happened recently it worries me. Also, the HD is almost 6 years old.

For some reason the clicking almost always happens when I open AS SSD Benchmark, when it says "drive detection". It happens sometimes when not clicking this program, but not very often. Still, it makes me worried that it clicks when not using the hard drive.

Does this make any sense? Why would it make the clicking sound when not accessing the hard drive?

Thanks!
 
TheSnowTiger117 said:
Hi,

I was just wondering if it is normal for a hard drive to make faint clicking noises. My computer usually makes two faint clicking sounds occasionally, usually when accessing the hard drive. I didn't notice this noise until I recently installed a new SSD and updated to Windows 11 from Windows 10. It is a Seagate HD. I tried using Seatools and it said that the hard drive is fine. I tried recording the clicking sound, but accessing the HD involved clicking the mouse and the mouse clicking sound drowns out the faint clicking noise the HD makes. Other than these clicks there is no sign that the hard drive is failing. I can access video games installed on the HD and they work fine.

Should I be worried? If it made the clicking sound from the beginning then I wouldn't be worried, but because they happened recently it worries me. Also, the HD is almost 6 years old.

For some reason the clicking almost always happens when I open AS SSD Benchmark, when it says "drive detection". It happens sometimes when not clicking this program, but not very often. Still, it makes me worried that it clicks when not using the hard drive.

Does this make any sense? Why would it make the clicking sound when not accessing the hard drive?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
You most probably have HDD in "Sleep"/power saving mode which shuts it down when not accessed for some time, When accessed it restarts and goes thru self test which involves heads moving from stop to stop which makes that clinking noise, they all do but some are noisier than others. If your HDD is too full or data is fragmented it also has trouble finding data so heads move a lot. Run a defrag program with optimization
https://www.iobit.com/en/iobitsmartdefrag.php
 
Thank you so much for your help. I turned off the hard drive sleep setting and am now defragging and optimizing the hard drive. I never defragmented it before, so there are a ton of fragments.

Thanks!
 
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USAFRet said:
Yes, I did turn up the volume.
Still nuttin.

So what is your current backup scenario?
(noise or no noise)
Click to expand...
The volume starts out on Reddit as muted. You un-muted it right? Sorry that you can't hear anything. I can hear it on my end.

I don't have it backed up. I think you are right that I should back things up. The data isn't too important though. I can redownload the games. There are some builds of a game I was working on in Unity, as well as some other games I worked on. However, I've been meaning to delete some stuff from the hard drive.

I will back things up asap, though. I think that is a good idea.

Do you think it is possible the noise is being caused by Windows 11? It only happened after I upgraded.
 
TheSnowTiger117 said:
The volume starts out on Reddit as muted. You un-muted it right? Sorry that you can't hear anything. I can hear it on my end.

I don't have it backed up. I think you are right that I should back things up. The data isn't too important though. I can redownload the games. There are some builds of a game I was working on in Unity, as well as some other games I worked on. However, I've been meaning to delete some stuff from the hard drive.

I will back things up asap, though. I think that is a good idea.

Do you think it is possible the noise is being caused by Windows 11? It only happened after I upgraded.
Click to expand...
It is almost certainly NOT a case of Win 11 vs something else.

Drives make noises.
Some more than others.
Some, after being reformatted and now different parts are being used more.

Backup is all on you.
Personally, i don't turn my system on without a known good backup of all drives involved.
 
For some reason, I changed my hard drive APM to performance and now the noises are gone completely.

Does this make sense? Is it okay to leave my APM on performance?
 
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