My hard drive does single clicks every once in a while. Is this considered the click of death?

Question

I've watched a few youtube videos demonstrating the so called click of death and they all show a hard drive that 'clicks' nonstop. My hard drive will occasionally make a clicking sound, but it happens sporadically and it's usually just one click. Does this indicate imminent failure as well?

Answer 1

No, some HDDs click. This however does not mean that you should not have any backup.

Answer 2

I do not think so.

My thoughts are more on entering some power save mode. Some disks (e.g. my old 2.5" HD) have click-like sound when stopping spindle in order to save power.

Answer 3

The clicking you hear may be the read head of the HD going back to it's resting position. This is most easily demonstrated with recent MacBook laptops because they have a feature where if the computer detects a sudden change in acceleration (like if you dropped it) it will move the HD's read head off the platters into a safe position to prevent a subsequent impact from causing the read head to touch the platters and possibly damaging the disk. So, when you jostle or shake your MacBook, you will often hear a single click from the hard drive quickly moving the head to a safe position.