What is that sound computers ?

Question

What is that sound computers make when booting up or opening a program? What is actually moving and making noise?

Answer 1

if you mean the faint clicking sound you can hear it's the read/write head moving over the hard disk platters

Answer 2

I can only assume you have a noisy hard drive.

As the media (disks) spin, the arms that the read/write heads are mounted on move back and forth to the various sectors to pick up the programs or data called for. This can be heard as a chattering type of noise.

Answer 3

I assume you mean the hard disk. It's a small metal box with one or more 3.5" in diameter platters. Heads hover micrometers above them, riding a cushion of air. These heads pick up magnetic ones and zeros which are your computer files. The chattering, clicking, or grinding sound is from the servo that actually moves such heads, as well as the spinning platters themselves. I'm guessing you have a rather old machine, because the new drives (last five years) seek (move the heads) nearly silently. I had a drive from 1990, on the other hand, that sounds like nails on a chalk board!