Clicking sound that the iMac hard drive makes every 10 minutes or so when in Sleep Mode.

My iMac is 2 years old. I have noticed that when I put it to sleep, the hard drive makes a
clicking noise every 5-10 minutes. I had my Lacie hard drive set up for Time Machine, but
the iMac also seemed to be making the Lacie whir every so many minutes, too. I have since
temporariily shut off my Lacie, but the clicking sound persists. It also seems to me that at
times the hard drive also is trying to "run" or activate momentarily.
I never hear the clicking noise when I am using my iMac.
I read many posts about other iMac owners having a similar problem. One "suggestion" was that
the iMac is not really in sleep mode. I don't understand that since I use the Sleep prompt under
the Apple O.S. Icon. I read somewhere else that the clicking is the cooling of metal, or something
like that. That seems a "reach" to me.
Any suggestions (or directing me to a thread that specifically addresses this issue) would be
much appreciated.
In any case, if I need to call Apple Tech (I have 1 year left on my warranty coverage), I would like
to know if they have probably encountered this problem. Also, what would be a good way to explain
the issue, if you can advise me on that.
Thanks!

I have since called Apple Support about the problem. They did not solve it, but did offer to call back. I was unable to be home for the call back. I will call them again, but they did not seem to be aware of any "clicking" problems the iMacs were having.
I timed the clicking noises while the iMac was in Sleep mode; it is every 2 minutes almost consistently. (Not the 5-10 I mentioned in my first post.) Also, it then has a slight "whirring" sound after the "click" or "ping" as if it is trying to process something.
My iMac does not make the clicking/pinging noise while not in Sleep mode.
I have searched the Net and these forums repeatedly trying to find someone who has had a similar "clicking" sound. One fellow suggested his hard drive clicked in Sleep mode because it was looking for a printer. That is not the problem I am having, since all printer jobs have been completed.
If any of you could help me on this or direct me to a thread that addresses the issue, I would appreciate it immensely.
Thanks.

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I'd make a backup of your important stuff before cloning the entire disk.
Carbon Copy Cloner will copy your startup drive to an external firewire drive. You can boot from the external drive to verify that you have a good clone. When you upgrade your existing startup drive, you can at any time boot from your external drive and go back to your existing system.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper's built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. And it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC Macs!

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Hi Niel.
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          [System] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist 3rd-Party support link
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Sometimes, a failing hard drive can cause sluggish behavior, however.
Boot into your Recovery partition (hold down the command and R keys whilst booting) and once at the Recovery screen, select Disk Utility. Select your hard drive (in your case, the aptly named "Macintosh HD") and click on the "Verify" button. If you get green text telling you that everything appears to be OK, then it's not your hard drive slowing things down. If you get red text telling you that the disk needs to be repaired, click on the "Repair" button. If the disk can be fixed, it will be. If not, call back.
Clinton

When ever the power goes out or I restart my iMac the external hard drive that is used by Time Machine for backups is dismounted ?

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fzgy wrote:
"Mac OS X can't repair the disk. You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can."
It's possible a heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair app can fix it, but they're expensive (DiskWarrior is about $100), and there's no guarantee it can do it.
Am prompted to reformat but I don't have a good understanding of what this means and how to do it.
That will erase it. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #5.
It sounds very much like the disk is beginning to fail, although it's possible there's a bad port, cable, connection or power supply (if it has its own).
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How do you stop an internal hard drive from shutting down when you didn't ask it to?
Background:
I use Missing Sync for Palm to sync my Palm handheld with my iMac. My Palm has a SD card slot it in and the sync software came with a program that allows me to mount the
SD card as an external drive on my iMac. From there, I can add podcasts, music or whatever I want directly to the card. I have used this software since March with no problems.
Also, when you put my computer to sleep or shut it down, there is a click and then the internal hard drive shuts down.
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You are right. It is failing. I took my Mac into the Apple Store and talked with a genius. Although the hard drive would not do what it had at home (typical when you're trying to get something diagnosed) I shut it down so he could hear the noise I do.
Sure enough, he said the noise I heard was the drive read head hitting its start position. When a hard drive shuts down, the drive head moves out of the way since the "hard disk" is actually a thin floppy magnetic disc. The noise I kept hearing was indeed the drive trying to shut down.
Fortunately, I did make a clone of my internal drive to that external drive 6 months ago so I was (eventually) able to copy over all the important files, update the external clone and boot off of it.
Sure enough, tonight, I opened Disk Utility and it said in plain red letters that the drive had reported a hardware failure and should be replaced.
Since my iMac is Summer 2001, the Mac Genius said they no longer carry parts for it so he gave me the name of a local place that would be glad to fix it up. I called them and luck would have it that they were completely out of the internal drives used by my model iMac. So I have to check next week to see if they have received more in yet.
The good news is I can get a slightly larger interal hard drive since I was down to 10GB of a 60GB factory drive. So far, I hear I can go as high as 160GB but the RPM must be lower since my iMac has no fans.
Thanks for your help! As much as I didn't want to believe it, you hit the problem right on.

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Brian

You said: "I've never tried the restore function in disk utility. Would that be the same as cloning the drive?
YES! See the my old instructions below. What you might try after step 5 is to restart you MBP holding down the Option key. Select the new HDD icon and see if it boots. This way you will know that the new HDD is operable.
Ciao.
INSTALLING A NEW HDD IN A MB
1. Make certain that you have backed up all of your important data.
2. You will need a HDD enclosure. One with a USB connection will do. A 9 pin Firewire is better.
3. Install your new drive in the enclosure and connect it to your MBP.
4. Open DISK UTILITY>ERASE. From the left hand column drag the new drive into the 'Name' field. Make sure that the format is 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)'. Click on the 'Erase' button.
5. Click on the 'Restore' button (on top). Drag the old drive into the 'Source' field and the new drive into the 'Destination' field. Click on the 'Restore' button on the bottom right hand corner.
Depending upon the amount of data you are transferring, this may take a couple hours or more. A Firewire will speed up the transfer. This will result in both drives having identical information on them.
6. After the data transfer has completed, you may swap the drives. Start the MBP and you have finished the installation. The initial boot may take a bit longer than you are accustomed to, but that is normal.
7. When you are satisfied that the new hard drive if functioning properly, you can erase the old drive and use it for any needs that you may have.

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Clicking sound that the iMac hard drive makes every 10 minutes or so when in Sleep Mode.

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