Weird clicking sound noise on the back if my imac

[rborsato]

I have a 2009 24" iMac with a 1Tb HD drive. It has been making a weird clicking sound for about an hour. Whenever I hear the sound the computer also starts to "think" as if it's trying to execute something processor intensive, when all I'm doing is writing this post.

Here you can hear the sound.
IMac HD geluid by Remco Borsato on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

This is driving me nuts, searched all Google, Called Apple.

Does anybody have a solution to this?

 

[harryb2448]

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Boot from the system disc and run Disk Utility > Repair Disk and see what is reported. Often the clicking is the sound of a failing hard drive.

 

[rborsato]

It is not giving any warning... Called apple care. They don't know what it is...

 

[Lifeisabeach]

My external drive makes that exact same clicking noise periodically. It always has. I've never given it much thought, to be perfectly honest, but I did a little reading up and it appears to be the drive recalibrating its heads as tracking errors occur when the platter warms up. See the final comment in this discussion:
Intermittent clicking noise but diagnostics show drive is OK! - Hard-Disks - Storage

You'd be more likely to hear this noise if the drive is put to sleep and has been idle for an extended period. Just to be sure, you should run check SMART status of the drive. Onyx, a free utility for OS X, will do this. A better tool though is SMART Utility. It will do a more thorough analysis of the SMART data and can uncover signs of impending drive failure far sooner than any other SMART tool can. It's not free, but does have a free trial so take advantage of it.