booted up my laptop and noticed a brief clicking sound near the hard drive (SSD). This happened after I attempted to use a USB hard drive adapter to see if my laptop could read data off a hard drive ...

There could be times when your keyboard might be making a clicking noise but not typing in Windows 11 or Windows 10. If that is happening with your right now, you could follow this article to get rid ...

Clicking sound? My guess is the hard drive is dying hence the issue with not finding files on the o/s.