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?
3 Answers
No, some HDDs click. This however does not mean that you should not have any backup.
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6+1 for backup. Should have it whether or not your HDD is making noises. Commented Nov 2, 2009 at 23:16
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Occasional clicks are thermal recalibration routines and not to be worried about. Commented May 20, 2012 at 1:31
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.
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.