IMac hard drive making clicking sound (audio sample)

A couple of nights ago I realized my five year old iMac was making a sound I have never heard it make before. It is a scratching noise that I assume is coming from my internal hard drive (hard drive is stock, has never been replaced). It isn't a super loud noise, but it sounds like the noise some hard drives make when they are "searching" or "thinking". I'm wondering if my hard drive is beginning to fail, or if the problem could be something as simple as dust or dirt caught in the drive. An audio sample is in the link below, please help me diagnose my problem. Thanks!
Audio sample: http://cl.ly/073d3U1e1t280M2X0m3F

When you ran SMART Utility, were any of the sensors out of range or close to it, although not enough to trip the health measure? Just wondering. I once replaced an older hard drive that was showing error rates above normal, even when the drive was still 'verified'.
Other than that, you've run several tests that would say the hardware is OK. As GeekStacy said, new hard drive noises are typically not good. So I'd be sure you have a good backup regimen, and if the noises get yet louder or more noticeable, you can either run these various tests again or replace the hard drive.

Similar Messages

IMac hard drive making a chirping noise!!

IMac hard drive making a chirping noise!! Its a quiet chirp that goes along with the hum of the hard drive. It doesn't always do it but I'm worried anyways. Has anyone else had this problem? Is it a problem?

They told me it's likely the CPU Fan - a known issue - and said that resetting the SMU was the first step towards fixing it. I performed that reset, but the crickets in my machine are still alive and chirping. Step #2, as it was told, is to take the machine back to the Apple service center to be repaired. BUT - looking through other threads here on the same issue, it looks like the issue is currently handled by replacing the CPU fan with another identical model and that because the underlying engineering issue has not been fixed, the crickets will return.
So if this problem is not harmful to the computer, I may be ignoring it for the time being.
Regarding the recalls though, where did you find the serial number range for the recall? I should check mine against that list.

IMac hard drive making knocking noise

Hi everyone. I woke up my iMac this morning, and the drive was making a knocking noise. There would be three "knocks" over and over again. Behind the noise, I could hear the whine of a motor speeding up, and then dying down. It repeated in a cycle: the motor winding up then dying down while three knocks could be heard. The computer would not wake up from this.
Finally, I rebooted with the install disc as a startup disc. When the computer turned on, it did not show the internal hard drive at all! I rebooted again, and this time the computer fired up just fine and everything was back to normal.
I've started backing up everything to an external drive. But I'm wondering: Is it time to go shopping for a new machine? This one is about four or five years old. I assume that if my hard drive is bad, it's not cost-effective to have it repaired. Is that correct?
Oh, FWIW, I did check the internal drive with the Disk Utility, and the SMART status said it was verified. (I don't know what this means, but I read about it online.)
Thanks.

Hi Roger. You were right about the pricing. I could have had a nice, much larger drive installed for about $279. But there was one thing that gave me pause: The screen was starting to show random lines and artifacts - all signs of the well-documented iMac display problems. Fixing that would have been a much more expensive proposition, and I decided a four-year-old machine wasn't worth it.
So instead, I backed everything up to an external drive and ordered a new 27-inch iMac, which is great. But while waiting for my new machine, I had to keep my old one alive. I noticed that the drive had problems waking up after the machine was asleep or off for more than a few hours. When this would happen, I would boot up with the installation disk and run the Mac hardware test. The test never detected any problems with the computer, but for some reason, just running the test (in the extended, 10-minute mode) would "wake" the hard drive back up.
After a few days of this, I came up with another solution. I just turned on iTunes and left it playing all night. I turned off the sound, so I didn't hear it. With this app running, the hard drive never went completely to sleep, and the machine would wake up every morning.
When my new iMac arrived, I connected it to my old machine (after waiting a few more days for a 800- to 400- Firewire adaptor - I didn't know the two machines used different Firewire connectors!) and I used Migration Assistant to move my data.
And with that, my old iMac died! It wouldn't boot up again at all. But it was still a good machine, and I didn't want to toss it. So I ordered a new 500Gb Seagate HD online for about $45 and a set of Torx screwdrivers. Using my new iMac to watch a Youtube video on how to replace the drive in the old machine, I swapped out the drive. The old iMac is now my kitchen computer, which I use for reading news, cruising the web and listening to iTunes. It doesn't need a large drive, since it's just used for light duty. And since it stays pretty cool (I'm not using it a lot or running CPU-intensive apps on it), the display problems so far have not reappeared.
Thanks again for your help!

IMac hard drive is clicking and keeps crashing

Am really getting quite concerned about my imac. It's 3 years old (Apple protection plan just ended a month ago!!) and over the last month or so I've noticed it keeps making a loud clicking noise coming from the hard drive (righthand side if the computer), on one occassion it started to make a loud whirring, like a fan, but was fine once I restarted. In the last couple of days it's crashed/frozen several times (whilst making the clicking noise) and I've had to restart it. Today I lost 2 files I was working on as they became corrupt after the crash. I keep reading that these noises can mean the hard drive is about to fail so I am really scared now. I'm not very good with technical things and I work as a freelance designer so my imac is my life!. I've done a What should I do?
I keep all my work files backed up on an external hard drive but do I need to do any kind of special back up incase?

There is no incase your drive is failing.
Make sure the drive is backed up. A clone in this case would be a good thing to have, this way when the drive totally goes you can boot off the clone and continue to work until you decide what you are going to do with the system.
good luck

Imac hard drive making low humming type of noise?

I have an imac that is about a year old. I don't run a lot of stuff at one time usually. Internet, email. I do movie editing at times but not when this problem appears.
My wife tells me I have sensitive ears so maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion. But I've noticed for the past 3 to 4 weeks that, randomly, the imac will make a low humming noise. The noise isn't constant (i.e. one noise that keeps going). It's more of an up and down sort of noise (whir-silence-whir-silence-whir, etc.). I notice the heck out of it to the point that it's giving me a headache. Wife said she doesn't really notice it.
It hasn't done this all the time or I would have noticed it. And it doesn't do it all the time but I can't point to anything I'm doing differently to cause it.
Is this a sign that the hard drive may be going bad? I've been computing for about 20 years and I've never had a hard drive fail. Not sure what signs/sounds to look for. Imac seems to be working flawlessly otherwise.
Thanks much.

Thanks to you both for the responses.
I installed techtool, and then downloaded the current version, ran everything but surface scan (default setting is not to do this) and everything passed. I will probably do the surface scan overnight as I'm assuming that takes time. But, I guess it's a good sign that everything passed, though it leaves me wondering what all the humming is.
Incidentally, it's NOT doing it right now, so it does turn off/on.
Again, thanks.

After four months my Imac hard drive suddenly began making very audible noises. What should I do? audible noises. What should I do?

After four months my Imac hard drive suddenly began making very audible noises. What should I do?

Back up your system, make a Genius Bar appointment and take it in. If it's 4 months old you are still on warranty, let them fix it.

Mac OS X v10.8.2 Mountain Lion - constant chatter on my iMac hard drive on start-up and no applications running.

When I log in, there is constant loud chatter on my iMac hard drive, before I open any applications, and Time Machine is not doing a backup. It continues sometimes for 10 to 15 minutes. What is running and why is it making so much noise?

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It will make no changes to your system, and therefore will not, in itself, solve your problem.
If you have more than one user account, you must be logged in as an administrator to carry out these instructions.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
sudo iosnoop | sed '50q'
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the page that opens.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up. You don't need to post the warning. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
Text will begin to scroll in the Terminal window. When it stops, copy the text output — not a screenshot — from the Terminal window into a reply to this message. Please don't post more than requested.
If any personal information, such as your name, appears in the output, edit before posting, but don’t remove the context.
You can then quit Terminal.
Important: There seems to be an obscure bug in OS X that sometimes causes input devices to lag or stutter after running iosnoop. If you notice this behavior, simply reboot to clear it.

IMac hard drive failing; external TM will restore but won't then back up

It appears my early 2009 (OS X 10.9.5) hard drive is failing as it crashed 6 months ago, in November and again this week. SMART Utility says it has re-allocated 6 bad sectors and there has been 1 re-allocated event. Each Time I have successfully restored from an external hard drive with TM on it. Prior to the November fail, CCC reported an odd (unknown to me system file) corrupt file but, instead of replacing the file as perhaps I should, I decided to re-boot which it wouldn't do and hence the November TM restore.
However, despite restoring successfully the external TM will no longer make back ups. I have tried repairing it but it is greyed out and Verify says 'unable to complete.' Eventually I did get the greyed out button to work but Repair reported:
Verifying volume “Time Machine”
Checking file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Keys out of order
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect block count for file iNode785919y8
(It should be 13 instead of 4194317)Invalid extent entry
Missing thread record (id = 82)
Incorrect size for file iNode78591999
(It should be 4096 instead of 274877907467)
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 78591999)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 78591999)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 18)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect block count for file iNo$e78592002
(It should be 4194317 instead of 13)
Missing thread record (id = 82)
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file iN/de7x592003
(It should be 4096 instead of 274877907467)
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 78592067)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 78592067)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 4194322)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 78592004)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 78592004)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 18)
Incorrect size for file iNode78592005
(It should be 0 instead of 64)I
nvalid extent entry
Invalid extent entryIncorrect size for file iNode78592006
(It should be 0 instead of 4194304)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Missing thread record (id = 4194322)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 82786312)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 82786312)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 18)
Incorrect block count for file )Nod%78592009
(It should be 65 instead of 1)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect block count for file iNode78592010
(It should be 0 instead of 4194304)
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file iNode78592011
(It should be 0 instead of 274877906944)
Invalid catalog record type
The volume Time Machine could not be verified completely.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Whilst pondering this, the hard drive crashed again this week. Bizarrely I was able to restore from the very same external TM that will not let me do further back ups nor be repaired.
I wonder if there are any further checks I can do to establish if my iMac hard drive is failing? I will then decide whether to replace the hard drive - I see I can fit a WD 6TB with the jumpers set to reduce the speed to 3GB/s - or buy a new iMac.
I wonder also whether there is anything I can do to preserve my TM back ups. I realise I am being guided to re-format this external drive, but can I do that and then add back the actual existing back ups (which I would transfer to another disk before re-formatting) rather than start again from no history newly formatted?

Omdineen wrote:
It boots up to where its just my background and the Finder bar but then crashes, so I can't click anything. Anything from here or am I just screwed?
There are a few remaining options.
If you have another Mac with a FireWire port, try FireWire Target Disk Mode: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
You need a FireWire cable to connect the two Macs. This will allow you to mount your failing HD on a working Mac and copy files that way.
Try Safe Mode - read about it first:
Safe Mode or "Safe Boot" is a troubleshooting mode that bypasses all third party system extensions and loads only required system components.
Starting up in Safe Mode
This assumes the Finder is crashing due to a third party system extension or optional system component that Safe Mode will prevent from loading. You should still be able to copy files directly to an external device, but file sharing will be disabled.
Lastly boot from the DVD again, repair the disk again, reinstall OS X, and keep your fingers crossed. You're squeezing the last drops of life from the thing.

How can I restore iMac hard drive on desktoptop?

I accidently removed my iMac Hard Drive icon from desktop. Is there a way to bring it back?

Thanks for your response.
I did as you suggested and the only options I have under General are the following:
Appearance
Highlight Color
Show Scroll Bars
Click in the Scroll Bar to:
Sidebar Icon Size
Number of Recents
Turn off Text Smoothing for Font Sizes
That's all that is listed.

Trying to clear a hard drive and clicking doesn't work

Am trying to clear an 1999 strawberry iMac hard drive for someone before sell or dispose of it. It is running OS 9.
The computer has not been turned on for 11 months. It will boot and the mouse cursor will move around the screen. If I double click on the hard drive icon, nothing happens. If a dialog pops up that has an accept that is return sensitive, that will work. So it not the mouse or keyboard.
The menu line nor any dialogs are clickable or openable.
I get a network time error dialog saying that the Mac clock is set to a year before 1973 and need to manually reset the date and time control panel (which I can't open). The clock on the menu bar says it is a Monday morning time.
I have booted hold down return and nothing is clickable.
I zapped pram with no effect.
Would a bad battery let it boot but not operate?
Short of tearing open the iMac and sledging the hard drive, any other options? A family might want to have an inexpensive but old computer for a child (once I take off the person's data files). I have to clear or destroy the hard drive if it is junked.

I replaced the battery and the problem was still there. After a few minutes the computer shut down and nothing since.
To clear the data on the hard drive, I opened the drive and bent the crap out of the discs. The computer is headed for recycle

I upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

i upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

Thank you. I followed the faq#14 (using setup wizard from the osx install disk). Everything went just as planned until I woke up this morning and noticed there was no progress on the "transferring documents" meter. It stopped about 1/4 of the way. I can hear the computer working and the bar is somewhat animated like it is advancing but it's not.
Should I cancel and restart or should I wait it out? It already been about 13 hours since I started the process. Do you think it is my time machine or my iMac? Maybe the time machine file is corrupt or something.
Anyway, any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Ello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want

Hello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive
Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want
install OS X 10.4.2 on the hard drive, I do not see the disk. What is the problem?

Thanks for the help
I started on the installation CD OS X 10.4.2, I used Disk Utility
to partition the disk according to the document that you have proposed. unfortunately
I have not succeeded. When I partition the disk, even if I called it Macintosh HD, it
does not keep the name and it shows disk0s3 instead. I did an erase on disk.
When I mount the disk it tells me that I must repair. When I tried to repair, I got
the following message:
Volume check failed
The underflying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error.
I also had a message:
Invalid b-tree node size.
Note: The disc is new, but it has already been formatted on a computer Imac 27 inch 2011 OS X Lion.
I used a USB 2.0 to SATA cable to adjust the formatting.
What to do to fix it?

Slow iMac and Time machine won't recognize iMac hard drive

I have an older iMac (2.16GHz Intel) that is upgraded to OSX10.6.7. Recently it has been running very slow (although it did not seem to correlate with any particular install that I know of). I have looked at the Activity Monitor and cannot find anything that is consuming vast amounts of memory (although I can't say that I really know what I'm looking for exactly, just no high numbers). I did a Safe Boot and it is still really slow there (EXAMPLE of slow is taking several minutes to open a program or taking 27 hours to download my pictures (which only took 13 minutes on my MacBook)). I know my iMac could use more memory (1G), but the slow problem is there even if only running one program. I can't find a particular pattern to it, it just hangs up and then comes back most of the time. It did however start shutting itself down recently. I finally got into disk utility (I've been trying to run disk utility and it usually goes into an eternal spin that I can't even force quit - have to hard boot). So from disk utility I ran verify disk in first aid - it says "the volume Macintosh HD appears to be ok." I"m not sure what else I'm supposed to do in here either. So my first question is Does anyone have any other suggestions for the slowness? Second, in the meantime I'm desperately trying to back up my data on the time machine that I stupidly have never set up as a back up. I can manually put files one at a time over there, but if I try to use it as a time capsule (system preferences, time capsule on) my hard drive does not show up as one of the options???? My external drive and the data that is already on the time capsule show up, but not my iMac hard drive. So my second question is How do I get my time machine to see my hard drive or is there another way to get my files to move over there? I realize I'm in trouble, any help would be greatly appreciated. I've tried to provide as much info as possible. Maybe there is something obvious I'm missing.

My own response, or rather an update: I took the computer up to the Genius Bar - my hard drive is bad. They are going to try to rescue my data. For those of you reading this with a similar problem, make an appointment and go to the Apple Store if you can. Mike, my personal "genius" for this encounter, said that stressing the machine when the hard drive is going bad just risks damaging it more. If you potentially have a hardware issue, take it and let them determine what is wrong. They have tools and diagnostics most of us wouldn't know how to use if we read about them here - and they have ways of retrieving data (I hope) that most of us do not have. Please note that disk utility said my hard drive was ok, but the diagnostics they did showed that in fact my hard drive was much less than ok, but it was still "mounting" hence the disk utility reporting it was ok. It is over an hour drive for me to get to the Apple store, and I only wish I had gone sooner.

What's happening with my iMac hard drive?

I was on Disk Utility the other day, and a message was displayed on my screen. It said... "This drive has a hardware problem and cannot be repaired. Back up as much data as possible and replace the disk. See an authorised Apple dealer for more information." This message was referring to my 1TB ST31000528AS internal iMac hard drive. What is causing this problem? Does this have something to do with the fact that BOOTCAMP was installed on my computer? What should I do?
Thanks in advance.

Contact Apple or your local AASP > Apple - Support - iMac - Service FAQ

I recently had the genius bar change my imac hard drive because it crashed. For some reason Time Machine didn't back up some of my important files. Can I get my damaged hard drive back from the genius bar to see if I can access that info?

I recently had the genius bar change my imac hard drive because it crashed. For some reason Time Machine didn't back up some of my important files. Can I get my damaged hard drive back from the genius bar to see if I can access that info?

Unfortunately, that drive is long gone, probably back to the mfr. Drives are not returned when they are exchanged. You can go by and ask them, but the chances are slim to none.

IMac hard drive making clicking sound (audio sample)

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for