Miss Hard Drive Clicking Sounds? The HDD Clicker v0.2 Can Help

Here’s a history lesson for our younger readers: for a few decades, hard disk drives (HDDs) were popular home computer storage devices. Unlike modern solid-state drives (SSDs), those HDDs had internal moving parts. Most noticeably, they had spinning magnetic platters and a reading head mounted on an arm. As that arm moved back and forth across the platter, it would make a clicking noise. We learned to associate that clicking with our computer accessing data and some people miss the sound. To get it back, Matthias Werner developed the HDD Clicker v0.2 for use with modern SSDs.

The HDD Clicker v0.2 only has one purpose and that is to simulate the clicking sound of conventional HDDs. This product obviously has a very niche market, but it is too charming for us not to cover. It should work with most modern computers, as well as almost every vintage computer that came with an HDD. If you have such a vintage computer but replaced the HDD with an SSD, this is the perfect product for you. You’ll be able to use that SSD, but will still hear the hard drive clicking so that you get the full retrocomputing experience.

This small device works by monitoring the HDD access LED. Those LEDs are now much less common, but they used to be ubiquitous. Their purpose was to indicate when the computer was writing data to the HDD or reading data from it. Even if you’re using an SSD, that LED should still flash as the computer reads or writes. The HDD Clicker v0.2 simply produces a clicking sound through a small buzzer whenever current flows through the HDD access LED wires. From what we can hear in the demonstration video, it sounds just like a real HDD.

This is a very small device that should fit in any PC case and is compatible with every computer that has an HDD access LED (though you may need to snip wires, depending on their connector type). It should be available for purchase soon through the Serdashop online store.