Hard drive clicks a lot

I just got my iPod and everytime I play a song, the hard drive clicks for about 2 seconds. I can feel it and I can also hear it too. Is this normal?
Macbook Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Is it clicking or is it just the HD spinning and the iPod loading up the song?
Or do you hear this through the headphones?
Try comparing it to another 5G iPod. Is yours the same?
btabz

Similar Messages

T500 Hard Drive Clicking (tick tick tick)

This noise is dirving me crazy. I have a new laptop. Please refer to article below from a link that also mentions this noise problem and please provide solution.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_hard_drive_clicking
Problem with hard drive clicking: sometimes described as a repeating tick tick tick type of ticking sound. The Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 series which shipped with many T series Thinkpads in particular is reported to suffer from this problem. The clicks occur rapidly, and are quiet but noticeable. While in use in a quiet environment the clicks can be relatively loud and very irritating to some users. The clicks seem to happen when the drive is idle and the power has been on for a significant period of time. The clicking is also reported on other vendor's laptop hard drives too and is therefore almost certainly a hard drive related rather than a laptop
chassis related.
The clicking sound appears to only occur when the drive is idle. Forcing the drive to be busy silences the ticking while the drive is busy. Launching programs that access the hard drive such as searching or defragmenting the drive helps for a time. Cycling the power on the hard drive such as through a full power off reboot of the system stops the ticking for the moment and has been used as a temporary solution. Also see use of hdparm for another way to reset the drive without a power off reboot.
Others recommend using Hitachi's drive feature tool to increase the acoustic management level, and/or set power management settings.

Hi faraz,
Have you tried Hitachi's Feature Tool as suggested? Hitachi has removed the acoustic management function in the latest version, but I think the power management setting is the one you want anyway. Set your drive for maximum performance / max power.
Good luck,
Frank
Results of Your Ideal Business-Class Laptop survey, concluded 2009-07-29.
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Portable hard drive clicking but it isn't a hardware problem

Here's what I have so far:
A portable hard drive bought via ebay
A desktop that only runs arch (main computer)
A desktop that only runs ubuntu (guest computer)
The hard drive clicks (about 4 times per second) when plugged into the arch desktop regardless of which usb port/hub it's plugged into.
The hard drive works perfectly when plugged into the ubuntu desktop's usb ports.
The hard drive does not show up on lsusb on the arch desktop.
The hard drive is apple branded but the enclosure/adapter definitely isn't. I don't think this makes a difference.
My main question is: What now?
edit: sifted through some logs for a while and didn't find anything.
I'm thinking that because nothing shows up in lsusb there is a problem recognizing the sata-usb adapter.
Last edited by z.s.tar.gz (2011-05-18 03:02:30)

Is the drive self powered, or is it powered from the USB bus ?
Is the drive drawing excess current ?? A USB device is not supposed to draw in excess of 100mA unless it negotiates with the host for more. Not all USB controllers respond well to devices that violate this.

Hard drive clicking sound when MBP in motion

Hi all,
I just bought the new 15" 2.53 GHz MacBook Pro with the SD card slot, and I noticed that every time I move the machine vertically (i.e. upwards or downwards), I hear a hard drive clicking sound. Sounds like a single chirp... if anybody knows what I'm talking about. What's wrong with this, or is this natural?
Thanks.

I think I have found our problem. We are not alone on this one. It actually concerns me after reading about this. Here is the link.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1935
I found this under a different thread in this forum. Other users are hearing this when they "bump" the right side of the laptop or when they suddenly move the laptop.

Hard Drive Clicking

I've noticed recently that my MacBook hard drive makes a very soft clicking noise at random intervals. Sometimes the clicks are seconds apart, sometimes minutes, and sometimes they don't occur at all. I only hear it when I'm working on the computer late at night, when the room is extremely quiet. Either it's not making the noise during the day or I just can't hear it. The sound is similar, although lower in volume, to the clicking sound the drive makes before shutdown. I've read varying responses on these boards, some say it's normal and some say it's a problem. I'm slightly OCD when it comes to machinery, so I could be looking for problems when none really exist. Should I be worried about this?
Macbook 2 GHz Processor Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2 GB RAM Upgrade

what is the best way to go about backing up my drive?
You'll find a lot of opinions in these forums on that topic. Many people buy an external hard drive and set it up to make regular, automatic copies of all or certain parts of the internal hard drive. That's probably the most straightforward method.
In six months or so Apple will be bringing out the next version of their operating system called "Leopard". One of its main attractions is an automatic back-up system that also includes the ability to go back in time to find files etc that have been lost/damaged etc. This facility is called "Time Machine" and you'll need an external hard drive to make use of it.
My own method at present: I use two external hard drives and back-up most files to one of them occasionally, but anything reasonably important I back up to both more promptly. I prefer to do this manually rather than automatically.
For very important files, I also back them up off-site, that is, remotely on the Internet. The reason is that if your back-up hard drive is physically close to the computer then they can potentially suffer the same fate, e.g. being stolen or damaged in a fire etc and then you lose both.
Some things to maybe take into account when devising a personal back-system:
• Personal mistakes (e.g. accidentally trashing a file)
• File corruption
• Incompetent or malicious person uses the computer in your absence
• Viruses etc (not a problem for Macs now, but maybe in the future)
• Mechanical failure of hard drive
• Theft
• Fire or other catastrophic damage to building.
In many years of using computers all of my losses have been down to the first two items on the list.
Incidentally, it can be risky to have a simple automated system which, say, backs up everything at the end of the day and overwrites the previous day's back-up. In this case if a file has become corrupted and you don't realize it the file in your back-up will become the corrupted version too. It can be useful to keep some older back-ups, maybe sometimes on a CD or DVD.

External hard drive clicking and not recognized by mac will DiskWarrior work?

First of all apologizes if I've posted in the wrong community I couldn't find one that really fit my particular query.
I'll give a quick rundown of what happened and see if anyone can help or suggest a course of action. My Seagate External HDD model SRD0SP0 was mounted to my 2013 MacBook Air when it started to make a loud noise freezing the computer and requiring me to force shutdown the entire system. I immediately rebooted the computer and it started up again fine but when I tried plugging in the drive to the USB it would only spin and beep at regular intervals and then go quite. The drive did not mount to the desktop but I could see it in DiskUtility although the 'verify' and 'repair' options were greyed out. I tried to connect to a PC but it would not recognize the drive either. I left the drive alone for a few months and now when I plug it in it starts to fire up with the whirl sound but that is quickly followed by 5 faint ticks followed by a louder click. It almost sounds like something is dragging and the click is it coming to an end before starting up again. (I have a .m4a recording of the this but I don't see an option to upload) This goes on for about 20 seconds and then a window pops up saying something along the lines of 'this disk is not recognized by this computer' and the options to 'initialize' 'ignore' or 'eject'. I have only ever clicked eject. As before the drive is visible in DiskUtility but the options are greyed out.
I contacted a data recovery agency and their response was:
I would recommend to remove bare drive from the External casing and connect it to a computer directly or via another USB enclosure. If the drive is internally fine you should be able to see and copy the files. If you still get the same symptoms then your clicking hard drive most likely has internal problem with read/write heads and needs head assembly swapped from a donor. It's a very serious problem and recovery procedure in this case requires a lot of experience, use of class 100 clean room and specialized equipment.
If stored files are not particularly important you should replace the hard drive. If you need data from the drive we could recover it for $950 USD.
At this time I am not comfortable taking my drive apart and I can not afford close to 1k in repair costs. From my research on this forum I have seem multiple suggestions to try DiskWarrior but I am not sure that it will work with the problems that I am describing. Before I spend the money has anyone had a similar problem and had success recovering their data via DiskWarrior? Or do I have to resort to the data recovery agency or the freezer technique?

If the drive is making clicking sounds then it will probably fail. That's evidence of a mechanical issue. DW isn''t going to fix that nor will Disk Utility. Only replacing it with a new drive will fix it. While you can you should make a backup.

Macbook won't recognize new hard drive tried a lot of things and need ideas

My MacBook rececently froze up and when i shut it down it just loaded with a folder question mark. I went through a lot of different discussions, and came on the conclusion my hard drive died! I bought a new one on ebay and i put it in myself. I tried loading software on it but it would not show my hard drive being there. I tried the PR+AppleOption but it still didn't show. I then went to disk utility and notice that the hard drive appeared there, but it wouldn't let me do anything with it. My warrenty is up and i was hoping i wouldn't have to take it in to the apple store, but i will at the end of the week if needed!

New drives need to be prepped before use:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

Why is my hard drive clicking when idle?

It seems this only happens in Lightroom. There is a constant click, like a hard drive head seek, once a second. I don't have Lightroom doing anything in the background like building thumbnails, but instead is just sitting idle there for hours. When I close LR, it stops imediately.
It has been doing this in LR since I can remember, like maybe years.
It's mildly annoying, and moderately worrying that my HD is getting extra wear and tear. Anyone else notice this, or have an idea why it's happening?
Thanks!

LR is hard on disks because it uses them a lot, more or less constantly (rather than at the end when saving as something like PS does, or only when rendering as with a Video editing application). It is reading and writing to the disk where the catalog and previews are and when in develop mode also to wherever the cache is located. If you also have write xmp to file selected it is writing to the disk they are located to as well.
Unfortunately you cannot separate the previews from the catalog, but everything else can be split onto different disks which both speeds up things generally as well as giving less wear to your disks.
If you can hear a disk over the sound of your cooling, unless you have a water cooled system you most likley have hot hard drives (or maybe not enough cooling fans, or both). Hard drives running at much more than room temperature fail quickly. Anything over 35 C and they fail very quickly. Clicking usually means that yet another location on the drive is being written off. eventually this will lead to failure. To much movement of the heads means a fragmented drive and/or one with too little free space. For an aplication like LR I would always want at least 25 % or more free disk space wherever the catalog is located.
Any noise from a hard drive, other than the start up whine that sometimes comes with some drives after they have been shut down completly, is bad news. I would run whatever checks are available on your OS first, although Windows checks are not that good. CPUID HW Monitor is free and will give you a good idea of the temperatures your disks are running at as long as SMART is enabled in the BIOS. If one drive is running a lot hotter than other then that will be the problem one.
HDD Regenerator claims to be able to regenerate disks. You can download a free trail. I am not at all sure about its claims to fix drives, but in trial mode it will soon show where the problems are and can be run within windows.
I have lots of drives on my systems as I also do some video editing as wekll as stills. I have experienced lots of drives going bad over the years. The one investment I made last year that certainly imporves drive read times and hopefully will delay drive failures (as well as good cooling) was a copy of Diskeeper. This constantly defrags drives in the background and hardly uses any RAM or CPU time to do it, an excellent aplication for anybody running lots of hard drives on a windows based box.
You can find the apps I have mentioned with a quick google.

X61 Hard Drive Clicking Sound

I have an X61 with a Seagate ST9120822AS 120GB hard drive(came with the machine) that functions fine but makes a lot of clicking noises. It is especially annonying in the library. I've tried to update the HD firmware but it seems that the new driver does not support Seagate HDs. I have heard that a clicking hard drive means that it is dying so I'm a bit worried. Is there a solution to this problem or is it just how the hard drive is designed? Thanks!

Some seagate harddrive are known to have a loud reader/writer head assembly, make sure you switch off the harddrive shutoff in the windows power management under the display property -> screen saver ->power, there is option for you to leave the harddrive on all the time. See whether this helps, if you think that the harddrive is dying, run the PC doctor 5 diagnostic on it or the HDD tests under BIOS.

Macbook Pro 13' freezes for 10 secs and hard drives clicks

Hi all,
I recently purchased a macbook pro 13" and it has started to make clicking noises every now and again (but it doesn't beep). The mac is also starting to freeze for about 5-10secs and then returning to normal.
The hard drive inside the macbook pro is a 160GB model.
Does anyone know why this is happening and how i can solve it?
Many thanks

Contact Apple. It sounds like a hard drive issue. It may need to be replaced.
Dave M.
MacOSG Founder/Ambassador  An Apple User Group  iTunes: MacOSG Podcast
Macsimum News Associate Editor  Creator of 'Mac611 - Mobile Mac Support'

24" Imac Hard Drive Clicking

Hello, i have a month old imac and it recently started clicking when accessing certain programs. It seems to be doing it more often as time goes on. I was thinking of zero'ing out the hard drive to solve the problem. Will this do anything or should i send it in for repairs?
thanks
24-inch imac Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hmm..Fredic is right. I've noticed you talk about your IPod. Now is the time to take some action if the HD proves unstable. They will ask for your OS discs that came with your computer so that they return your computer to to its original status. They may update the latest 10.4.8 for you and the new 7.0.2 ITunes but you you may have to update yourself. To save your entite ITunes library before your HD fails, go to the IPod + ITunes tab on the top of this page and go to tutorials. In the IPod tutoral, on page 15 is a cool video that will demonstrate how to turn your IPod into a HD, and copy all your ITunes library music. When your Imac is returned with a new HD, you can simply transfer the info from your IPOD-as-a HD , to the new ITunes and then change your IPOD back . What you've done here is to mimic the procedure of copying your ITunes to a HD as if you've bought a new computer, which in a manner of speaking you've done, since this is a new HD. The only disadvantage of this method to using other 3rd party software is that half of your IPod memory must be freed up in order for this to be effective. Best of luck, MonsieurG.

Why is my hard drive clicking?

i have a parrallels desktop installed on my mac. every time im using parallels theres a clicking noise coming from my hard drive. Why???

It's dying.
Common symptoms of a dying hard drive
Hard drive is making a clicking, whirring, grinding, ping pong ball noise or any other type of unusual noises.
Hard drive is not spinning.
Computer is not recognizing the hard drive.
Sluggish loading of applications.
System freezes and hangs.
An interesting site - Hard Drive Sounds by drive manufacturer.

Hard drive click... sudden motion sensor?

whenever i carry my macbook, the hard drive makes a clicking sound. Is this the sudden motion sensor?

Yes. Depending on what you mean by "carry", you should probably put it to sleep or turn it off when moving it.

HT4718 Installed new hard drive, click on restore from time machine, get to 'select a destination' but just keeps searching for disks.. any help please?

Installed new hard drive and want to restore from time machine.
Get as far as 'select a destination' then it goes no further - just keeps 'searching for disks'
Help anyone please?

1. Be sure your drive is attached and mounted.
2. If you have already written any data to the drive, back it up before proceeding to the next step.
3. In the Finder, choose Go > Utilities. The /Applications/Utilities folder will open.
4. Launch Disk Utility.
5. Click the icon for your external hard drive in the sidebar on the left.
6. Click the Erase tab along the top of the window.
7. From the Volume Format menu, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
8. Enter a name for the external hard drive in the Name field.
9. Click the Erase button.
Make Sure that you choose the correct drive

Hard drive clicking and disk utility can't repair

I have an iBook G3 that recently started making a clicking noise from the left side of the computer. At the same time it froze up and now it won't start up. I tried to start it in safe mode and it didn't work. I was able to start the OS X install disc and start the disc utility, but I get an error: Invalid Sibling Link, Volume Check Failed.
Does anyone know if there is anything else I can do to try to repair the hard drive myself? If not, how do I find someone reputable to get the data off of the drive (no I didn't back it up... ever) and install a new drive?
Thanks for any suggestions!

Hi, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
You could buy DiskWarrior and see if it can repair your hard drive. It can often repair a hard drive when Apple's own Disk Utility cannot. No guarantees that it can do it for yours, but DiskWarrior has saved my hard drive several times.
If you are able to get it up and running, be sure to back things up right away.

Hard drive clicks a lot

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