My hard drive is making a clicking/grinding noise, is it dying?

Question

I have a 3 year old dell inspiron 531 with a 232gb hard drive. It is making a noise that I'm not sure is clicking or grinding. It doesn't happen in my dell studio xps 9000, and it happens less in my inspiron 1420, and I'm not sure what it is. It is not constant, and happens when idle a little, but much more when it is opening something. I installed quiet hdd and it didn't really fix it. I'm going to be selling it and building a new one (it's my parents' and they don't use mine), but until then, I don't know if I should back it up. My external verbatim 320gb hard drive is broken, so I can't put my stuff on that, but I was thinking of putting it on another computer or some flash drives. I just want to know if I have to.

Update:

It's been happening for a while now, more than 6 months, and I don't know exactly when it started. Hdtune said the health was ok. While running the error scan, it made the noise mostly constantly, I will try backing up and reinstalling the os.

Update 2:

it is just like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EV6pLzcRb0

Update 3:

It's more like a buzzing noise, there were no errors.

veran · Accepted Answer

That happen to me once and i just reinstalled my OS and it fixed it.. i had windows home and it was horrible.. it sound like the same symtoms as my computer i say if u have the original cd jst return it to factory setting or install a new OS.. it will fix it.. im on the same computer that made tht noise but after the install it got alot quiet all i hear is the rpm.. for me it was somethin with the os and i didnt get the chance ti isolate it so srry thts all i can give u.

Anonymous · Answer

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My hard drive is making a clicking/grinding noise, is it dying?
I have a 3 year old dell inspiron 531 with a 232gb hard drive.  It is making a noise that I&#39;m not sure is clicking or grinding.  It doesn&#39;t happen in my dell studio xps 9000, and it happens less in my inspiron 1420, and I&#39;m not sure what it is.  It is not constant, and happens when idle...

Adrian · Answer

Yes, clicking noises from a drive all the time when in use suggests it is failing...

Download and run HDTune, it has a tab that shows the "health" of a drive. Any yellow or red highlights will show failures are coming...

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

Download the "Free" version, not the "Pro"

Anonymous · Answer

Definitely back it up.  My HDD started clicking for a couple of weeks then started getting errors and then died completely.  Clicking sounds definitely indicate a looming problem... you are lucky you are getting some warning.  Back up now.

n0t4c|u3 · Answer

Yes, it's dead. Stop using the computer until you have a hard drive to image your old drive to.
It's failure is imminent, don't be dumb and lose all your data, stop using it.

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My hard drive is making a clicking/grinding noise, is it dying?

5 Answers