One of the hard drives in my girlfriend's machine will every so often click softly and rhythmically like a clock. No, I didn't actually see if it was every second.

Thing is, if she were to open Winamp and have it access her mp3's (which are all located on one drive), it wont do this. It leads me to believe its the second drive with the mp3's. What would be causing the drive to be accessed in this manner, or should I replace the drive all together?

Don't want to scare you but... usually, clicking noise=first sign of impending drive failure. I'd get any important data off that drive ASAP.

i am overly exspireced with failying drives and i definatly agree who long ago did this start happening

Every drive has a motor-spun platter and a head, both of which make sounds.
Because of friction and usage induced wear, you will notice these sounds becoming
more and more louder/pronounced until an internal part fails, or comes to a halt.

It sounds like the drive is pretty old, I'd replace it to maintain data integrity and, obviously, loose the noise.

GET TEH DATA OFF THAT DRIVE NOW!

My drives did that a week before failing.

I've also had clicks of death... I don't believe its that sort of click though. It sounds like a drive does when it's old and noisy... just softer and with more bass to it, if that makes sense.

Say it's an old drive then. Old drives tend to fail. Think of hard drives as tires of an
otherwise mechanically perfect car, they are going to wear down and eventually fail.

It sounds like a bad drive. HDD's are very sensitive creatures. If you want to impress your GF tell her what I wrote below but make sure you have a spare drive handy and have all her data backed up:



Some HDDs have a built-in in clocking mechanism. HDD manufactures use atomic clock standards so your pc time will remain accurate. This is done because Windows atomic feature is useless. My advice is to open up the HDD and tell me what time it is. The bult-in in clock is not digital so you may want to review your roman numerals If the time is incorrect, re-adjust the arm above the platter to the noon position and at the same time this will enhance the speed of the drive. Oh yeah, the arm is one microinch from the platter, make sure you do this in a dust free enviroment. Remember, fabric from clothing contains dust.

LMFAOThats awesome.