Date: 08/18/05 (Computer Geeks)    Keywords: html, web

      Hello everyone-

    I've been somewhat carefully been using a windows XP SP2 desktop (80GB hard drive, 768RAM, 2.8Ghz celeron...etc) for the past one and a half years. I recently had to move back home because the residence halls closed (heh) so I moved everything back, including my computer. I thought all I suffred was a minor glass scratch on my monitor, but today my computer has started making clicking noises from the inside.

    The only times I ever hear any kind of noise remotely close to this kind of clicking is when I turn my comptuer off, so I'm assuming that if it isn't the sound of my power supply (nothing to click in there, really) or my CPU fan, then it could possibly be my hard drive. But I'm not really sure...

   I was playing Ragnarok Online (a 3D game) for about four hours when I noticed the "click" noises were getting more and more frequent, until one of he clicks was followed by another sound that sounded a lot like something that had stopped turning. By then the game was frozen, and when I promted the start menu to pop-up, I got... whoa.. a winNT blue screen of death. I haven't seen ones of those screens on this machine, ever.

    I rebooted after the blue screen, hoping it was just a quirk, but the comptuer booted up making clicking noises from the inside of the machine, and then gave me a "No Operating System Found" error. I rebooted again, and this time when I heard the clicking, I tilted my box a bit and then let it land with thump. ...and then my computer booted normally.

    Naturally, I was sort of concerned so I looked online about hard drives clicking (assuming it IS my hard drive. Maybe other devices in the comptuer are also capable of making clicking noises?) and I found this:
http://losangelescomputerhelp.com/computer_networking_news/hard-drive-clicking.html
...which of course sort of scared me, since I put all my useful computer stuff (including my spare crap computer) away in storage, and I really need my comptuer for tonight and tomorrow. It booted up for now though.. heh. ...But is this a serious problem? There are no clicking noises right now, and it seems like everything is OK, but I get the feeling the clicking noises will come back and, if that website isn't being too paranoid, that my hard drive might brake.

    Anyone have experience with clicking noises coming from the tower? My hard drives (I have two wester digital drives in there = an 80GB master and a 160GB slave/each are less than two years old) have never made this kind of clicking noise, although I do know that the clicking noise is common in older hard drives. ..but this clicking was sporadic and scattered, unlike the natural clicking of older hard drives. oo;; please advise.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computergeeks/750567.html