Depends on controller chip / manufacturer.
You can also check disk manager to see if it shows up there...
In the past I replaced about 20 laptop size drives, both internal/external The most common "sound" I have heard was "clicking" when they were dying, second most common sound was it would start to spin, sudden stop then start spinning again, usually in timed and recognizable pattern.

Another random thought. Last big Windows update caused a lot of driver problems for people. Just yesterday I spent an hour reinstalling drivers on my mother's laptop, because her touch function of the screen stopped working after win update. I got it fixed by rolling back to older drivers. What I am trying to say, while it seems related to the drive, it could be something else too.