eMachines T2542 - odd clicking during restart

I have some desktops that have accumulated over the years and I'm trying to refurbish them to get them into the hands of someone who can get some use out of them. I was hoping I could find some people on this forum who were familiar with some of the oddities I've run across in trying to get these units restored. Here's my first challenge:

I located recovery disks for the T2542. Everything restored fine but, when the unit restarts (or shuts down), there's an odd rapid clicking and the amber HDD light flashes along with the clicks - the only way to stop it is to unplug it. The CMOS battery was dead, so I replaced that, and the front of the power button is missing, so it gets stuck 'in' sometimes - I verified that it's able to move freely, but the clicking still remains.

I've never seen anything like this, so I wanted to see if it rang a bell with anyone. Thanks in advance for any help.

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IronFly

it looks like an HDD going to failure, this a "classic" sound when there are issues on heads parking.

SVTarHeel

It does the same thing with 2 different hard drives. I'll try another one tomorrow and see what it does...

SVTarHeel

I should mention... this doesn't sound like a typical bad hard drive clicking - it sounds like it's coming from the computer speaker. It's not a metallic click like the hard drive arm sticking - it's a much faster click rate.