Hard drive noise -- slow computer

Hi folks. If anyone can give some advice that would be great.
My hard drive seems to be acting up. Every so often (probably 4 five-minute periods in 3 hours of use per day) I'll hear loud noises coming from the hard drive (a series of "grrrrs," "beeps," and "clicks") and when that happens, the computer will freeze, pinwheel/beachball will appear and I won't be able to do anything on the computer for a couple minutes.
I took my issue to the genius bar, they ran some tests, said it wasn't a hardware problem (therefore hard drive is ok physically) and did something to fix some problems in the hard drive. For a few days after, everything seemed to be working fine but now the problem has returned.
The only programs I have run since then are Safari, Firefox (which is always slow), MSN Messenger, iChat and MS Word.
When I go to the Disk Utility, the "Repair Disk" button is not clickable.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

First, in order to run repair disk, you need to boot from your OS X disc, since you can't repair a drive you've booted from. Insert the first OS X disk that came with your system, and holding the C key down, reboot (boots from the OS X disc). Choose disk utility from the menu bar, and you can run repair disk.
When you bring up disk utility, does the S.M.A.R.T. status say verified? I use a utility called smartreporter which provides a SMART status on the menu bar. This may give you warning before a hard drive failure. It's at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/smartreporter.html
You can use a utility like OnyX to clean things up on your hard drive. It's available from http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/download.html . Use the cleaning and maintenance tabs.
Difficult to say if you're hard drive is in fact on it's last legs, or if there is a fundamental issue with the data or indices on the hard drive. A utility like TechTool Pro or Disk Warrior can do things that Apple's Disk Utility can't do, in terms of analyzing and fixing issues on the hard drive. That might be worthwhile also.

Similar Messages

Why my Mac Pro hard drive noise and too slow?

Why my Mac Pro hard drive noise and too slow? Totally 8 gb speed system but now very slow . Please give some suggestions

Another thing you can do in Lion (and ML) is click on the "Info" button in Disk Utility to get the SMART status of the drive.It's more detailed now than it used to be and it might tell you if something is wrong.
A lot can go wrong with a hard drive which is why I tend to point people to the downloads section of the following web site:
http://scsc-online.com
They have a free hard drive troublleshooting download book there. I reccommend people download that before asking questionis because there are tons of problems that can act like hard drive problems when there's nothing wrong with the system at all. For example, how full is the drive? How many applications are running? What's the status of Spotlight indexing? How many apps are you running? How much memory do you have?
I could probably think up 20 or 30 more if needed.

Disharging with USB, Freezing on Sync, Hard Drive noise on Line Out

I have been dealing with three issues with my 60GB iPod click wheel with color display (Photo).
The first is something that slowly creeped in, which is hard drive noise that is audible through the line out when the iPod is charging in a dock. I'd like to say it's like a ground loop issue, but it's in my car, on my iHome, and on my apple dock when plugged into power on a stereo system. It sounds like the spinning of the hard drive is correlated to the noise.
Second, over the past year or so, I've noticed that when I have the iPod plugged into any mac using USB, the iPod discharges. My friend has noticed the same problem on her 40GB 3rd generation iPod. We've tried them on several computers. Firewire connection, no problem, only USB when plugged into a computer, not the power adapter.
Just recently, the iPod froze up iTunes and the rest of my Mac (G4 MDD Dual 1gHz, OS X 10.4.10, iTunes 7.4.2) during sync. I made reformatted the iPod using Disk Utility, Restored to iPod, making sure to plug into power to finish the restore, then attempted to resync. Two attempts of this and I get the same result, a freeze.
The first two issues, I've adapted with, but this last one is just frustrating. I will attempt to sync using a firewire cable, but that should not be the solution. This iPod came with a USB cable, it should charge and sync with one. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Thank you!

ok I went here for instruction on how to take it apart since I wasn't having much luck on my own:
http://www.flexbeta.net/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=20&t=8269
his tip worked for me so far. hopefully this won't be just a temporary fix:
Good tip: if your iPod seems dead and the hard drive is throwing errors pull out the connection at the bottom of the ipod mainboard and plug it back in, this will hard reset your ipod and worked a few times for me

Hard Drive noise on iMac

Seems if I tilt the monitor down more the hard drive noise gets louder... Is this a common issue with the new Intel based iMacs? I will have to check but computer was also in sleep mode for awhile so not sure if this still happens... It isn't too loud... but if it says like this it will be annoying...

Happened today on my new Macbook Pro, 15-inch i7 while editing in final cut. Has happened several times before this, as well. Never had this problem while editing on other computers, including an older Macbook Pro and also a 2.26 Ghz dual Quad Core tower.
The clip that caused the blowout had the following audio: 16-bit integer (Big Endian), Stereo, 19.2 Khz.
My sequence settings for audio are currently 16-bit, 48 Khz, Channel grouped.
Please get around to fixing this, folks at Apple. I work as an editor and I currently can't wear headphones for fear of blowing out my eardrums.

IMac 2009 (21 inch) making hard drive noises during sleep mode - normal??

Hi there guys,
I have an iMac 21 inch (2009) , 3ghz C2D, 4GB Ram, 1TB hard drive (the hard drive was upgraded straight thru apple, when i bought it i paid extra for a 1tb hard drive, its not a DIY hard drive upgrade)
aniways, I recently noticed that during sleep mode, occasionally (not all the time) I can hear some faint clicking / hard drive noise, which is really weird because i put the imac in sleep mode and it really shouldnt be doing that no?
My 13 inch macbook pro 2010 never does this in sleep mode, its always dead silent
Im just wondering if this hard drive accessing / clicking noise during sleep mode is normal in imacs??

Im just wondering if this hard drive accessing / clicking noise during sleep mode is normal in imacs?
No it should not be doing anything but sleeping. The SMC controls sleep, try resetting it.
Reset the SMC
• Shut down the computer.
• Detach the computer's power cord.
• Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
• Release the power button.
• Reattach the computers power cable.
• Turn on the computer.
Dah•veed

Lightroom 5 is tied to my photos in a folder on my computer, if I move that folder to a hard drive, how to I connect Lightroom to the new location on the hard drive vs my computer?

Lightroom 5 is tied to my photos in a folder on my computer, if I move that folder to a hard drive, how to I connect Lightroom to the new location on the hard drive vs my computer?

How to recreate iTunes Library
No content shows up in iTunes after updating

HT4527 I just had to clear the hard drive on my computer - now I want to transfer all the music and pictures from my ipad back onto my computer. 'Sync' doesn't do it. What do I do?

I had toclear the hard drive of my computer and reinstall Windows 7. Now I want to transfer all the music and photos from my iPad back onto my computer. I authorized the computer (it is the ONLY computer authorized on this account - and this is the ONLY account on this iPad). ITunes then downloaded my purchases...or at least it tried - out of the hundreds of tracks I have purchased, it managed one album that I bought over a year ago and NOTHING else. So I tried to Sync - since on older versions of iTunes (that were SO MUCH MORE user friendly) that would do the job -transferring things that were only on the iPad onto the computer and vice versa. It doesn't do that anymore. So I went from my iPad's summary to the Music tab - the box for Music was not checked but when I checked it said the only thing it could do was erase EVERYTHING from my iPad and replace it with what was on my computer (that ONE album). What is going on?
Why hasn't iTunes downloaded my other purchases since I authorized the computer? (there are over 3,000 tracks...not 18)
How can I download my iPad to my computer?

-Me again - it also won't upload the few new pictures I have on the computer onto the iPad without deleting all the photos that are already there....

I had to install a new hard drive on my computer, when I downloaded itunes back onto my computer, none of my songs were there. how do i get them back??

I had to install a new hard drive on my computer, when I downloaded Itunes, all my music was gone. How do i get my music back? I do not have an Icloud.

Syncing to a "New" Computer or replacing a "crashed" Hard Drive: Apple Support Communities
You can redownload iTunes purchases by:
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store

Can Itunes Library access 2 hard drives on one computer?

I have too much music,videos etc to live on one hard drive and am installing a 2nd hard drive on my computer. Can itunes library get files from different locations on my computer? Ex. different hard drive paths?
Thanks
PC Windows XP
PC Windows XP

Mort already answered you, but I thought I would throw in, if you are going to a larger drive, you might consider consolidating/moving everything to the one larger drive if you can simply because it makes backing up or moving your library again much easier if everything is in the one folder.
Patrick

I have a video that I created for my daughter's first birthday. The hard drive on my computer crashed and I lost the video file. The only place I have it is on my iPod Classic. How can I transfer the video from my iPod to my new hard drive?

I have a video that I created for my daughter's first birthday. The hard drive on my computer crashed and I lost the video file. The only place I have it is on my iPod Classic. How can I transfer the video from my iPod to my new hard drive?

You are in luck, Refer to this recent post by tt2, on recovering media using 3rd Party Software.
He has made a comprehensive list, browse through them and decide which suits your requirements.
Have a nice day!

TS1382 I have a ipod classic 160GB and it's not showing any music anymore, but there is still 7GB of memory being used, and I don't have it back up on my itunes, since I had to put a new hard drive on my computer. Any suggestion to find out whats on that

I have a ipod classic 160GB and it's not showing any music anymore, but there is still showing 7GB of memory being used, and I don't have it backed up on my itunes, since I had to put a new hard drive on my computer. Any suggestion to find out whats on that memory or to get it the music back, there is approximately over 1400 songs on it?

What is the memory being used by, is it Other? If it is, that means the iPod can no longer read the music, so it has put it all in "Other".
The usual fix for this is to allow the iPod to Sync with its iTunes Library. If that doesn't work, the next option is to Restore the iPod using the Restore command in iTunes, on the Device/Summary pane.
Unless you are very (very) lucky, I suspect that you are going to have to Restore your iPod. Restoring will remove everything form the iPod and put back onto it only what it finds in your iTunes Library, which you say is currently empty.
If you have to rebuild your Library after this issue, by adding all the music back again, this is going to be hard to hear, but for the future, you may want to consider always having a backup of your library. The easiset way to back the Library up is;
if the Library is small enough, burn it to a DVD, as digital files, not a "music CD".
If your Library is too large for a DVD, buy yourself an external hard drive and copy the Library onto the drive. Remember to update the backup every so often.

Two Hard Drives on my computer - one totally full the other totally empty - how do I manage this - windows 8

Hi I have two hard drives on my computer running Windows 8. One is called OS (C:) and has 10.2GB free of 186GB, the other is Data (D:) and has 258GB of 258GB free.
I have just tried to update to Windows 8.1 and have had an error message saying there is not enough space on the OS drive to update as it needs 20GB.
What do I do about this? how do I get to use the 258GB of free space on the Data drive?
I'd be grateful for an answer!

Hi,
In addition to the above information,
If your operating system is Windows 2008 and higher(Server) or Windows Vista and higher(Client).
Then you can use the native tool Disk Management to solve your requirement.
For opening Disk Management, Right click -> Computer -> Select Manage -> As result Computer Management console opens -> In the left pane under storage select Disk Management.
In the Disk Management, for extending your C: drive,
- Since your partition layout as, C: drive | D: drive.
- After shrinking D: drive, the layout will be C: drive | D: drive | Unallocated space.
- Since the unallocated space is not contiguous, when you right-click C: drive the "Extend Volume" option will be greyed out.
- So to solve your requirement, you have to backup the data on D: drive -> Delete D: drive -> right-click on the c drive and select "Extend Volume" -> enter the size you want to add
- Finally you can create a new D: drive from the remaining unallocated space and restore the backup data.
Checkout the below thread on similar discussion,
how
to increase space in c drive
Regards,
Gopi
JiJi Technologies

When I try to install ios lion the installer says my hard drive has SMART errors and that I need to buy a new Hard Drive, but my computer witch has snowleprd and runs just fine

When I try to install ios lion the installer says my hard drive has SMART errors and that I need to buy a new Hard Drive, but my computer witch has snowleprd and runs just fine.

SMART is a technology that monitors the drive for signs of impending failure. You can verify that SMART is indicating a problem in Disk Utility. Select the hard drive and look at the bottom of the window. It should look like this:
If the SMART status is not "Verified" then you should back up your drive and start shopping for a new one.

I have Windows 8.1. I have had MageMaker 7.0.1 working fine on desktop for MANY years. Had to get a new hard drive. Now computer doesn't read the PM DVD. so I can't reinstall it. Can anyone help?

I have Windows 8.1. I have had PageMaker 7.0.1 working fine on desktop for MANY years. Had to get a new hard drive. Now computer doesn't read the PM DVD. so I can't reinstall it. Can anyone help?

Sorry, but the chance of ever getting PM to work on Windows 8 is somewhere
near zero.
Buy a very old computer or move to a new application.

Strange iTunes Move from Old Hard Drive to New Computer

My friend's old computer exploded but the hard drive and its data are fine. He had iTunes on it (not sure what version) and I'm trying to figure out how to move iTunes to the new PC but I'm running into a few problems.
First of all, I hooked his old hard drive to the computer with an IDE to USB converter so it mounts as just another drive.
I then installed the latest iTunes on his new PC and when we hooked up his iPod, it asked to blank the thing out (so I hit Cancel).
So my question is a little more complicated than most since I have two things to accomplish here. I not only want to move his existing iTunes library to his new PC but I also need iTunes to work with his existing iPod. Hopefully, that won't involve wiping it since he has songs on his iPod that he doesn't have on his old iTunes, but perhaps I'll need to somehow get all his songs off his iPod, let iTunes wipe the iPod, then put them all back? I imagine I'd need to bring his iTunes library over first.
Anyone have any ideas of the steps necessary to make this dance happen? I'm very computer literate, so detailed explanations aren't needed. I just need general directions and what order to do them in.
Thanks,
bd
DELL Dimension E521 Windows XP

Chris,
I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that the music on his iPod isn't completely the same as what's in his iTunes. This is what made this move so strange. I needed to figure out not only how to move his iTunes music collection to a new PC, but also how to keep iTunes from wiping his iPod since he has music on it that isn't in his iTunes.
Since the new iTunes won't recognize his iPod without wiping it, is there any way to manually pull the music off his iPod, somehow put it in his iTunes folder so iTunes recognizes it, allow iTunes to wipe his iPod so he can synchronize iTunes with it, and finally put all his music back on his iPod?
Thanks,
Brian

Hard drive noise -- slow computer

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for