Windows 7 Premonition of failing hdd

[grapher]

I have 4 SATA hdd drives. One is a Seagate 1TB. Recently I have had a curious (to me at least) recurring symptom. My drives are split into partitions. Just one of the drives partitioned into three "drives" upon cold boot triggers the pop-up panels that appear when a removable drive has been attached "hot". My Kaspersky Internet Security then asks me if I wish to have these drives scanned for the usual nasties. i.e. the machine really does believe that this hdd is actually 3 removable drives all of which have just been plugged in. NOT TRUE. The drive is on one of my SATA Mobo connections and has functioned normally for a year or so.

The second hint occurred yesterday when suddenly I heard a regular, quiet tick emanating from my PC case. Now many years of experience tell me that a noise from a PC case which has never been heard before usually spells forthcoming trouble. 30 minutes later I suffered a BSOD IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL Stop 0x0000000A event.

Can an expert confirm what I believe to be a failing hdd is the sensible diagnosis? I have regular backups so can restore to a replacement hdd if that becomes necessary.

 

[zvit]

I confirm. If you write: "many years of experience tell me that a noise from a PC case which has never been heard before usually spells forthcoming trouble", I agree with your gut feeling. Without even relating to the BSOD, ticks of any kind are hardware related and usually from HDD's. Good that you have it backed up. Go get the HDD checked.

 

[Pauli]

Second that. And even if we may not be sure about it, do you really want to sleep your nights with the ghastly feeling? Sometimes security costs less financially than emotionally.

 

[Joe S]

I think Seagate has a utility to check their drives for problems.
Joe