I've had hard drives fail before, and they often clicked near the end. My laptop is a 2016 Lenovo Z51 with a magnetic HD, and it recently started making strange sounds while idle about once every two hours or so. It's closer to a loud chirp than the clicking I've heard with other drives, but I'm worried that it's the hard drive.
Things I've tried to rule out:
- Heavy/extended hard drive seek noises (e.g. when swapping, swapoffing, or opening large directories/files): The odd sound is louder and isolated and seemingly happens even when idle, not just when I know there's I/O.
- Isolated hard drive seek noises (e.g. with <10 terminals open or when browsing): With light I/O, I often get similar sounds, but the recent noises are much louder.
- Speaker mute/unmute noises: Muting/unmuting the speaker on Windows (but not Linux with ALSA or Pulseaudio) produces a loud click, but it's just a mildly irritating burst of white noise and not a chirping sound.
- Stray audio: I don't have any system sounds in my default environment, and the chirps persist even when muted.
My question is mostly one of whether I should run fsck at this point as opposed to replacing the drive (or if it's something innocuous). If it's not the hard drive, are there any particular components it's likely to be instead? Is there a relatively nondestructive way to pin down what's wrong?