SJ Tech Support: Help!

I have an external hard drive next to my computer. Once a month, Apple's Backup does exactly that for us.

Tonight, while I'm sitting here, the drive has started making this clicking sound. Before, it only did that when you booted it up. When the icon would first appear on the screen, the drive itself would make a click. But now it's doing it repeatedly, and it sounds like I can hear something spinning in there.

WTF?

 

I'm not an Apple guy, but it sounds like your hard drive might be getting ready to self-immolate. If there's anything on there that isn't backed up on your computer, you might want to copy it over there, asap.

 

Check to make sure the fan (if there is one) is not blocked and is operating properly.

 

All of the above.

There could be dust caught in there, the drive could also be on the road to puke-dom.

Back up your back up, check the vents, check for dust and if after doing all that it still makes noise, I would look at getting a new external hard drive.

There's also tests you can run which check the condition of a hard drive, but only know of PC versions, not any Mac. Sorry 'bout that.

 

Apple's built-in Disk Utility can check the disk for you. But yeah, clicking usually is the sound of impending doom.