HDD Clicker generates HDD clicking sounds, based on HDD Led activity (serdashop.com)

What absolute nonsense. I love it!

Im all for this. I miss the tactile feedback of older hard drives, you knew the computer was actually doing something. New computers are too quiet, like electric cars.

If it hooked into the OS, it could generate even more appropriate sounds:

* past SMART errors => knock of death sound

* unrecovered errors => head crash sound

There's probably a way to do this in software? Like some cars simulating engine noises through the speakers...

Reminds me of adding a Taptic Engine™ to a flash-upgraded iPod classic.

https://eoe.works/collections/shop-all-ipod-video-ipod-class...

I have a watercooled workstation (don't ask), and one day I made it spin up the pump when the chips heat up. I believe it goes from 17% pwm to 18% whenever any chip is more than 15°C warmer than the water. Changes nothing, and you wouldn't set it up like that.

But the immediate frequency change is enough for me to anticipate a delayed reaction. "Oh, computer is computing. Reach for coffee."

The sound is not right. This clicker sounds like a Geiger counter ticking out of control. The HDD sound is much deeper. It should sound as if the minute hand on a clock decided to tick out of control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUvlWt9WTKA

Don’t forget to PARK YOUR HEADS before shutting down!!

I just realized today after 20 years that my computer stopped making noises.

It's progress but I miss those clicking sounds.

Old news.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cM_sAxrAu7Q

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Is it perfect? No. But I have one of them in a Pentium 200 MHz system that I use a front-facing CF card slot as the primary means of storage, and I very much appreciate the audible feedback for disk activity. I just wish there was some mechanism to simulate more accurate sounds, but I digress.

P.S., Depending on the CF card, this machine runs Windows 9.x, Red Hat 6.2, OPENSTEP 4.0, or Apple Rhapsody DR2 hehe

Yes, but does it make that magical spool-up sound of a 5MB ST-506 trying to sound like a jet turbine?

ST-506 startup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7ImJwSmjzs

T-53 startup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNe9T1FRhwg

Tell me those aren't the best sounds ever.

Now if it could just play FF7 tunes:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RLXQpJgZklk

21% VAT when shipping to the US? No thanks.

Now I miss Nullsoft Beep which did this along with other futuristic kinda hums and etc. I assumed there would be other good implementations of the same idea but haven't found much yet.

This needs a floppy companion with spinning and seeking noises for external drives.

Agreed with other comments that it doesn't sound quite right. There are many types of HDD seeking noises, but this one is too high pitched, too fast, and too loud.

I have a lot of vintage HDDs from 20 MB MFM to several GB IDE & SCSI drives and grew up with them.

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That reminds me of the Click of Death, which plagued the Iomega zip/jazz drives

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death

For those that might want a software solution, Trixter made softhddi- https://github.com/MobyGamer/softhddi

There was a HN submission for a project which had lots of quality sounds for different models of HDDs, but I can't find it anymore. Does anyone have a link?

I have one of these installed in my 486, happy to answer questions!

I like the sound from early XTs hard disks, across between a been and a squeak, with the deeper chkchkchk sounds too.