My computer has developed a strange tapping or clicking noise that doesn't seem to come from the fans. I temporarily stopped the fans, but the sound continued. It eventually stopped after the computer had been running for a while. Could this be a failing hard drive, and how can I safely check whether the drive needs to be replaced?
1 Answer
That sounds a lot like a mechanical hard drive starting to fail. If your PC has a traditional spinning hard disk, back up anything important immediately. Clicking or tapping can indicate the drive is struggling to read or move its heads, and these drives can fail with little warning.
The drive is the physical spinning disk, usually connected with SATA data and power cables near the power supply. An SSD wouldn't normally make this kind of noise.