Ticking Noise

chalky

I've just noticed a ticking noise coming from my laptop.
I've heard this can be a sign of a failing harddrive. Is that true?

irlrobins

Yep. If its coming from where your hard drive is located, backup your data now! The "click of death" is a sure sign it's on it's last legs. Backup the most critical stuff first.

Ruu_Old

Unfortunately, it looks like the hard drive is about to go. Do you have an external hard drive you can use for backup?

chalky

Yeah, I've an external drive. Not too sure whereabouts in the laptop the ticking is coming from. How long would you reckon it has? Or is it in anyway predictable? Laptop is only about 8 months old

irlrobins

5 mins? 5 hours? 5 days? impossible to know. Only run the hard drive for backup. Don't keep browsing boards,etc. The longer u use it the more likely it is to fail completely.

chalky

Yeah I turned it off as soon as I heard the ticking. I'm using a different PC now. Will back it up tomorrow. Who wants to take bets as to when it fails?

Sam Vimes

maybe al'qaeda got their hands on your laptop?

liamo

All good advice in the preceding posts.

An additional possibility is that there is a process carrying out a frequent, regularly spaced read (and/or write) operation. I've come across this a few times although I was never able to track down the process in question/

Regards

Liam