IMac Mid 2007 Hard Drive Making weird noise

My 20 Inch Aluminum iMac from mid 2007 started to make some weird noises today when I turned it on. Not the usual noises but a mix between a creeking noise and a scratching noise. I have a program called smart reporter and my hard drive is not failing, but it is making noise. It is the hard drive because I checked the fan speed, and I know what the fan sounds like when they are on very high, also it is not the microphone, or speakers, i tested them both. I do not know what to do and this is a major problem, since my warranty expired on august 31st. Please help, I am open to anything, Thanks.

Good question.
If the hard drive in your intel iMac was as easy to replace as the one in the G5 iMacs I would suggest buying a new drive and installing it yourself. Unfortunately it's not for the faint of heart.
I'm not sure how much Apple or an Apple authorized service center will charge you for a new hdd and install. I would call around and ask.
You can always just make sure your files are backed up and just wait. Who knows. It could be a couple years before it dies or tomorrow if that the problem. It's up to you.
lenn

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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!

Replacing imac 24" mid 2007 hard drive

hello everyone
recently my imac 24" mid 2007 320gb 2gb ram mac hard drive completely failed i have tried everything it starts up sometimes then freezes other times it doesnt even recognise the hard drive so i am currently using it through a boot on a external hard drive my question is if i were to replace the hard drive myself (using youtube videos i am quite tech minded so looks fairly easy) would i have to get a certain type of hard drive i know its 3.5" but is there a simple to the size 1tb/2tb and als oi have read the transfer rate may need to be tapered down is that true and if so how would i go about doing it ?
any help will be appreciated thanks very much
craig jenkins

http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2003/05/01/sata_hard_drive_with_a_kick/raptor-3.j pg shows an image of a hard drive with a jumper. Reading from right to left, the first four prongs are power prongs. Next you'll see a white plastic item covering two pins (that's known as a jumper). On some SATA drives, they cover the prongs circled in red on this image:
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b13/CRazY_GAmEr_07/SATA2.jpg
Either style of pinout on SATA drive, if you don't have the jumpers covered by the right plastic item, it will not work backward compatible, or will confuse the computer as to what speed it actually is. This is why you need to ask Western Digital if any jumper needs to be on the jumper pins of the drive in question to work as the master drive on your computer given your computer's data bandwidth for hard drives.

Ibook g4 won't go past gray screen, hard drive making whirirng noises

I think I'm in pretty serious trouble here...
I left my 2-yr old ibook g4 running last night downloading a couple of torrents, and woke up in the middle of the night because it was making a loud whirring noise. I tried to close everything, but found that it was frozen. So I just powered it off. I've never had it freeze on me, or otherwise had any problems with it before.
When I turned it on this morning, it would make the initial startup chime, but would not go past the grey screen with the apple. I tried several times, with a couple of slightly different results. The first time I got the apple with the circle underneath. The second time, I got no apple, but the circle with a line through it. And the final time, its just been the apple. And all the while, the hard drive is making a really ill sounding whirr.
I read another post about trying to boot from the install CD, so I inserted the CD & pressed c, but nothing happens, and now the CD won't eject.
Is it possible that it overheated? I got an e-mail about the battery recall, but according to my serial number, mine wasn't one that was being recalled.
Please help!
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Haven't had any replies yet, but I do have some progress to report...
I was able to eject the Panther Install CD1 after all (pressed the eject button immediately after I powered on). Have tried booting from it a couple of times, to no avail. I was, however, able to boot it from my friend's Tiger Install DVD. I went into Disk Utility, as I have read elsewhere and tried to repair my hard disk using that, but got the following error:
"Repair disk failed. Could not unmount disk"
Probably a stupid question, but is it because its not the correct operating system?
I still don't know why it won't boot from my Panther CD.
I have tried to boot in Safe Mode, but all I get is a little folder icon that alternately flashes the finder icon & a question mark.
I purchased my ibook online when I was still living in Canada, but its no longer under warranty and I didn't purchase the protection plan. I am currently living in rural Japan, with absolutely no Apple Stores anywhere remotely close to where I am.
I've also seen elsewhere that I could probably just get a new hard drive, which is fine as I could use the extra space anyway, but does this mean I lose everything that's on my current hard drive??
If anyone has any suggestions, it'd much appreciated!
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

The manufacture name in iMac (early 2007) hard drive?

Can some one tell me what manufacture the hard drive in iMac (early 2007)is?

Welcome to Apple Discussions.
It will vary from machine to machine, Apple uses different vendors for hard drives. How you can find out what your machine has is open System Profiler and click Serial-ATA on the left. It will then tell you the model HD you have. By copying and pasting that info into Google you can easily find out information about the drive.
If you are looking to replace the drive any 3.5" SATA drive will work. One vendor that is helpful for replacing HD's is OWC. Their internal HD page is:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/3.5-SerialATA/
Regards,
Roger

Super Drive Making weird Noise on start Up

My super drive makes a weird noise when the computer starts up, is there anyways to turn off the drive and prevent this issue?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyo7rPjxRRw
I have a Macbook pro Mid 2009 15in

Perfectly normal on many MBPs. There was a firmware update a while back that was supposed to eliminate the noise (which is simply the drive checking to see whether a disc is inside it). Some people reported that the update stopped the noise, others that it stopped the noise on waking from sleep but not at startup or vice versa, and others that it had no effect at all. For me, with a late '08 unibody, it stopped the noise on waking but not on startup.
Some other users have reported that inserting a CD most of the way into the drive while the computer is on, but pulling it out just as the machine began trying to ingest it, stopped the noise for them. I haven't tried that, because the noise doesn't bother me and I don't like the idea of fighting with something the drive is trying to do.
Message was edited by: eww

Does anyone notice there hard drives making load noises?

i have the newest macbook pro and it seems the hard drive is rather load!! between that and the fan this computer is twice if not three times loader then my previous macbook pro. is this just my unit? it is kinda annoying when the computer is sitting on your lap.

No, my HD is rather quiet and the fans only make a noise when the laptop gets hot and the fans ramp up. If its rather loud, then there's little you can do other then bringing it into your local apple store. Hard drives are a bit louder when they're new because the bearings have not fully seated but the drive shouldn't be too loud.
Also download the widget iStat Pro, which will tell you your computer's temperature and fan speeds. If the fans are stuck on high for no real reason you may want to reset your SMC

Is my internal hard drive dead?!? (iMac mid-2007)

Hi everyone,
My aluminum iMac (mid-2007) is behaving strangely recently. I'm suspecting some internal hard drive failure. Here are the symptoms:
1) Difficult wakeups from sleep mode: two times out of three, the spinning beachball appears on each open application, making the iMac unusable, almost frozen. I have to hard reboot.
2) One reboot out of two fails, with the "question mark folder" appearing, just like if the iMac could not detect an internal hard drive.
3) In the Finder, the spinning beachball appeared once with an error message: "The drive has not been ejected properly". Of course I didn't eject or disconnect any drive... There was also an icon "SystemUI Server" appearing in the Dock! I was forced to hard reboot.
4) Made all the usual stuff: all Onyx tests and repairs + Apple Hardware Test full tests + permission and disk repairs + PRAM/SMC reset... No problems detected, but nothing resolved in the end. (The only thing I haven't tested yet is Techtool Pro or DiskWarrior.)
I think this is an internal hard drive problem, but I'd like to have a confirmation from you, forum pros. Would a hard drive replacement fix the problem? Or is the internal drive OK but some connection to the drive not working anymore, making a HD replacement useless? (Sorry if this is nonsense, but I'm not very skilled in hardware stuff.)
In other words, any help would be appreciated. (And my AppleCare expired some weeks ago! Talk about bad luck...)
Thanks in advance for any help!

D.F. wrote:
Done! Installed a new HD following the instructions of this site. Everything works perfectly again.
Yay!
But I'm still disappointed that my original internal hard drive chose to die two weeks after my AppleCare three-year warranty expired!
The original HD was a Western Digital. Is WD a crappy brand?
You'll get widely different opinions on that. Many folks say their --cheap-- inexpensive ones are "junk;" others say they've had several that ran for years.
Some say the ones Apple uses are better quality -- not quite server grade, but better than the run-of-the mill consumer products.
As with any manufactured product, disk drives may have a few early failures (even in the first days or weeks); a few will last for many years, most will last for 2-4 years or so. Even under identical circumstances, there's no predicting the life span of any one drive.

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.

I have an older IMAC mid 2007 intel core. I want to transfer my backup files from an older Maxtor drive to a new one. My old drive is not support by Yosemite. Can I transfer the files to a new supported drive?

I have an older IMAC mid 2007 intel core. I want to transfer my backup files from an older Maxtor One Touch drive to a new one. My old drive is not support by Yosemite. Can I transfer the files to a new supported drive? I haven't bought a new one yet. Any suggestions as to which new one to purchase?

See if you can get the drive to mount. See mount section of 1st link.
Disk Unmount Using Terminal
Disk Utility – Force Mount Disk

Mac Book Hard Drive making Noise

Mac book Pro hard drive making noise

Are you sure that's not your CD/DVD drive? If not, and you are still worried or if something goes wrong you could get a Genius Bar Reservation at your local Apple Store.
Hope this helps!

Have installed 10.10 on my iMac (mid 2007) 2.4 GHz 2Gb memory which has slowed to a crawl

have installed 10.10 on my iMac (mid 2007) 2.4 GHz me 2 GB which has slowed to a crawl

Try these in order testing your system after each to see if it's back to normal:
1. a. Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
    b. Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
2. Restart the computer in Safe Mode, then restart again, normally. If this doesn't help, then:
     Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the
     COMMAND and R keys until the Utilities menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the
     computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager
     screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
3. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
4. Reinstall Yosemite: Reboot from the Recovery HD. Select Reinstall OS X from the Utilities menu, and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
            because it is three times faster than wireless.
5. Reinstall Yosemite from Scratch:
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
How to Clean Install OS X Yosemite
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
            because it is three times faster than wireless.

Imac mid 2007 with mac ox lion reformat with what os

hi i have a imac mid 2007 and i have with mac os x lion with it and i wanna reformat it because its so slow what os do i will install again?

You may just need to reinstall, not reformat:
Reinstalling Lion/Mountain Lion Without Erasing the Drive
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Does mountain lion run on iMac 10 1 hard drive

I have an iMac 10 1 that needs a new hard drive. It is currently running OS 10.6.8. I'm trying to decide whether to replace the hard drive, which is failing, or to just replace the machine. Key consideration is whether I can get this computer to run Mountain Lion and therefore become more compatible with my brand-new MacBook. I don't know that much about hard drives and chips and operating systems, or whether I would need to replace some other components in the iMac in order to run Mountain Lion. In which case, I would just get a new iMac.

You can upgrade to Mavericks (not Mountain Lion) if your machine meets the requirements:
Upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion or Mavericks
To upgrade to Mavericks you must have Snow Leopard 10.6.8, Lion, or Mountain Lion installed. Purchase and download Mavericks (Free) from the App Store. Sign in using your Apple ID. The file is quite large, over 5 GBs, so allow some time to download. It would be preferable to use Ethernet because it is nearly four times faster than wireless.
     OS X Mavericks- System Requirements
       Macs that can be upgraded to OS X Mavericks
         1. iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) — Model Identifier 7,1 or later
         2. MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) —
             Model Identifier 5,1 or later
         3. MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) — Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         4. MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) — Model Identifier 2,1 or later
         5. Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) — Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         6. Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) — Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         7. Xserve (Early 2009) — Model Identifier 3,1 or later
To find the model identifier open System Profiler in the Utilities folder. It's displayed in the panel on the right.
Are my applications compatible?
         See App Compatibility Table — RoaringApps.
Upgrading to Lion
If your computer does not meet the requirements to install Mavericks, it may still meet the requirements to install Lion.
You can purchase Lion by contacting Customer Service: Contacting Apple for support and service - this includes international calling numbers. The cost is $19.99 (as it was before) plus tax. It's a download. You will get an email containing a redemption code that you then use at the Mac App Store to download Lion. Save a copy of that installer to your Downloads folder because the installer deletes itself at the end of the installation.
     Lion System Requirements
       1. Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7,
           or Xeon processor
       2. 2GB of memory
       3. OS X v10.6.6 or later (v10.6.8 recommended)
       4. 7GB of available space
       5. Some features require an Apple ID; terms apply.

Imac (mid 2007) - which OS to install?

Hi there,
I have recently lost my early 2006 macbook. It has had numerous issues such as the common flickering screen, and the bulging battery issue. I was going to attempt to install a new inverter and battery in it but instead, i was able to find a 24" mid 2007 imac with a failed hard drive. My friends were going to dump it as they are going to get a new imac 5K so i decided to take it home. I installed a 1tb disk in it and 6gb of ram to bring it up to modern standards. It comes packaged with 10.5.8 (Leopard).
I also picked up a used magic trackpad for it but only to realize after that it requires 10.6 to run the magic trackpad.
So now my question is, What OS should I run for the iMac (Mid 2007, 2.4Ghz, 6GB Ram, 1TB 7200rpm HDD, ATI Radeon 256mb GDDR3 Memory). My main priorities is speed and performance, the second priority is to be able to use the magic trackpad. I will be using it only for web browsing, listening to music and watching movies. I have other computers at home that deal with "work" (batch editing photos, photoshop, etc).
Thank you very much for your time.

My personal preference for you is to purchase a OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard install disc, then update to OS X 10.6.8 and STAY THERE!
Your IMac will run its best on OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard.
Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard system requirements
Purchased Installer disc here.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard
To install Snow Leopard for the first time, you must have a Mac with:
An Intel processor
An internal or external DVD drive, or DVD or CD Sharing
At least 1 GB of RAM (additional RAM is recommended)
A built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
At least 5 GB of disk space available, or 7 GB of disk space if you install the developer tools.
Later versions of OS X are more memory intensive and lean more towards being a hybrid of OS X and IOS.
The only other choice I do not really recommend, but your 2007 IMac may run okay on it is once your IMac is upgraded to OS X 10.6.8, purchase an email download code for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
To install OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.9 Mavericks (currently unavailable) or OS X 10.10 Yosemite.you need one of these Macs:
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion purchased emailed download code here.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/D6377Z/A/os-x-mountain-lion
iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later),
MacBook Pro (15-inch or 17-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
Mac mini (Early 2009 or later)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
Xserve (Early 2009)
Your Mac also needs:
OS X Mountain Lion, Lion, or Snow Leopard v10.6.8 already installed
2 GB or more of memory (I strongly advise, at least, 4 GBs of RAM or more)
8 GB or more of available space
While there is the free OS X 10.10 Yosemite for immediate download on the Mac App Store, your iMac model will run a lot slower on this OS X version and is NOT without plenty of issues and really is not ready for use as an everyday OS.
My opinion here, stay away from installing OS X Yosemite for quite awhile.

IMac Mid 2007 Hard Drive Making weird noise

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