Crackling Noise Hard Drive or Speakers?

While listening to some music last night, I wondered if the low grade crackling noise I was hearing meant the speaker(s) were going bad in my G5 or if that is the death noise of a dying hard drive. Knock on some wood, but I've never had a hard drive go bad in 19 years of having macs. No other problems, just that noise. Which it is making even though I'm not playing music now (that's the scary part). If it is a hard drive, I'm worried how much backing up Time Machine actually does on my external drive...is it backing up the applications, too, or will I have to reinstall all those if the drive croaks? When I look on Time Machine, it looks like everything on my computer is there, including music & pictures. If you use Time Machine, can you restore it on an entirely different computer (meaning not the same size drive or OS)?

Could that be a “clicking” noise rather than “crackling”? It probably is your HD. I have never restored from Time Machine, but judging from some of the top users in these forums I don’t see it as the preferred method for back-up. Their preferences seem to run toward Carbon Copy Clone or Super Duper, both of which create a fully bootable back-up. I personally use Carbon Copy Cloner because of it’s boot capability which means that all your data & apps will be saved and you can start up from your external drive and continue to work until you replace your internal drive.

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