Is it the PSU or the HDD?

[culex]

I'm gonna guess it's the HDD but I don't think I've seen HDD failures like this (it still works) so I need a confirmation.

Lately I noticed that one of the older HDDs I use purely for storage (it's an old 250GB WD) tends to just power down at random times. I notice I can actually hear a drive power down with a 'click' and spin sound dying out.

Last night I noticed I heard a constant powerup and powerdown along with the clicking sound from that same drive but it wasn't planning to stop anytime soon. Every second or so, it would powerup, then immediately power down.

I turned off the PC and took out the power cable and reconnected it. Powered up fine and still works fine as of now.

Now I know the dreaded 'clicking' is a HDD failure but this isn't it. This is likely just the HDD dying, right?

This rig was built only 3 months ago all with new parts minus the old HDDs I used for storage.

 

[C1]

If it is the old WD IDE JB (BRLT) 7200 rpm version then dont worry about it - that's what they do - click then spin up or down as needed. Ya, Ive had some of mine go into spasms sometimes particularly when they are left idle too long (remember that the OS bothers these drives too when sitting around such as trying to go into caching/page file checking mode). I would just do a disk check & SeaTools check and if those are okay, then proceed to confidently use the drive(s). f they are like my drives, then they will out live YOU!.

 

[paul878]

I had an old scsi drive that did that years ago, it would pass all hd diagnostic tests.
Eventually one of the titanium capacitor on the hd board got so hot it turn black.