Is my Mac Mini HDD about to fail?

I carried my Mac Mini while traveling a few times, once to a different country and couple of times to different cities.

I once noticed the hard disk inside makes noise like its about to fail. But the noise is not noticeable unless the room is very very quiet, or when I keep my ear on the Mac Mini hardware and I can clearly hear the creeking noise from HDD.

But running disk verify shows no error. Will the apple store replace it for me due to bad health of the HDD? I am still under warranty.

I suggest taking a backup and going to an Apple Store soon.

I had two situations like this with funny creeking noises, the hard drive eventually slowed down and stopped working - no bad sectors or anything. It just eventually stopped.

It was not an Apple drive, but I am sure it's worth asking. Worst case scenario you will have to come back when drive eventually dies.

Tiny clicking noise is normal for HDD since it is a mechanical head moving up and down during read and write process.

The Disk verify is not 100% checking every single sector.

To see if there are problems Open your console and type Error in the search window and look for Disk I/O errors.

If you have them, those are the first signs of disk failure.