Internal harddrive making scratching sounds after installing Kali

[Kofphtastrophe]

So, i've had the same hard drive for around 8 years now, in addition to my brand new external hard drive and a 2-year old internal one.

The 8-year old hard drive has been like new for the past 8 years, but ever since i installed Kali linux OS (yesturday) the hard drive's been making a scratching sound, which immediately alarmed me.

It sounds as if it's writing and reading files even when no processes are running.
I installed Kali linux on the 2-year old hard drive, which is even weirder.

If anyone has any idea what could be causing this i'd really appreciate it.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Kofphtastrophe]

El bumpo

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, Kofphtastrophe!

These noises definitely sound concerning! I'd strongly recommend you backup any important data from your system somewhere off-site before proceeding with the troubleshooting of the problematic HDD. These clicking/scratching sounds could be indicating internal hardware failure on the drive and this is something that cannot be fixed, so you should definitely think twice before trusting any data with that hard drive. 8 years is a long time, maybe you should consider replacing it.

I'd also recommend you to use Smartmontools in Linux OS to check up on the S.M.A.R.T. status of the HDD and find out what is its overall health as well.

Hope it helps. Keep me posted!
SuperSoph_WD