Is my hard drive starting to go? (MBP 1.83)

There is a strange sound coming from the left palm rest area on my MBP that I can only assume is coming from the hard drive. The best way to describe it is that it sounds like a helicopter. The sound is very faint, and I only noticed it tonight as I study in silence. When I pick up my MBP, the sound pitch changes or goes away completely depending on the angle I hold the laptop. Other than the noise, everything works fine.
Any ideas what this could be? I had an old iBook HD crash on me, and would sure hate to go through that again with my MBP. The drive is a Toshiba.

I tend to be very nervous of any clicks or strange sounds emitting from my hard drive. I know the "click of death" is a sure way of knowing your hard drive is on it's last leg.
Unfortunately, no one here can adequately diagnose your problem. I suggest you make a thorough backup of your system as soon as possible, then take it into an Apple Service Centre so they can run some diagnostics on it.
You can run Disk Utility on it and verify the permissions and repair the disk, but these might not be sufficient.
Making a backup and getting someone to look at is the best way to avoid potentially losing data.

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I have just updated my hard drive in my 15" MBP. I then loaded lion over Internet and then restored from my old HD. Now the MBP will not boot! Have I stuffed it?

HI, help! I have just replaced my hard rive in my 15" MBP.I have loaded lion back via Internet . I then restored from my old hard drive. Now the MBP won't boot, where as before I restored it was operating perfectly just with out my data only icloud data. Can I erase, my restore? Will I ever see my data again?
concerned

I have just replaced my hard rive in my 15" MBP.I have loaded lion back
via Internet . I then restored from my old hard drive. Now the MBP
won't boot
What do you see on the screen when it doesn't boot??
Gray, Blue or White screen at boot, w/spinner/progress bar
or
Folder with question mark issue?
How did you restore from your old hard drive?
Technically all that was needed was to use Migration Assistant on the fresh OS X install to migrate users accounts and programs to the new machine.
You can use a SATA to USB adapter to connect the old drive if you want to go that way and start over with a fresh install again on the new drive.
Reset your Mac

Need help picking the correct hard drive upgrade for my MBP

I need help picking the correct/best hard drive upgrade for my MBP. It is the 15" 2GHz Core Duo. Came with a spacious 90GB drive.
Suggestions and recommendations very appreciated.

It will take almost any 2.5 inch sata drive.
Take a look at www.newegg.com and www.macsales.com to see what's out there and how much it costs.
Toshiba have a 320gb 2,.5 inch drive in the works, but it's not quite out yet and will be expensive.
I'll start you off..
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=380&name=Laptop-Hard-Dr ives

Time capsule hard drive starts/stops every 5 min: problem?

Every five minutes, whether or not a time machine backup is due, my 1 TB time capsule hard drive starts, spools up, then stops (I used a stopwatch to time the interval). Is this a problem? Never happened when unit was new (late 2010), or before Lion.

Yes, it is a problem..
Firstly check the log if there is a lot of instances of AFP getting logged in and off again.
Try disconnecting everything that is ethernet connected to the TC.. does it still happen.. if yes, turn off all the wireless stuff and see if it still happens.
If it still happens disconnect the wan.
There simply may not be anything you can do about it.. Lion has altered the setting for spotlight to analyse the drive.. but the new firmware also seems to make it worse. Not sure if you can stop it or not.. but it will cause issues over time.. in fact it would be better if the hard disk never spun down than to do it on 5min interval especially if the disk is also parking the heads.
How desperately do you want to pursue the problem??
I would suggest wiping the current setup. And even erase the drive after copying anything you need off it. So you get it back to scratch. You can ring applecare if it is still under warranty. I am not sure they will treat it seriously.

Hard drive starts and stops a few times

I went to my parents for the Christmas holidays today and tried to use their older computer to put music on to my iPod. Since it's so old I couldn't use iTunes, so instead I used Ephpod. After it was done copying the files to the iPod I saved the changes and disconnected, but immediately afterwards instead of going straight to the menu, the hard drive started and stopped about 10-15 times with the Apple logo being displayed. Now I can't reach the menu, the hard drive will start and stop spinning until it gives up, and when I reconnect it to the computer it won't even recognize it as an external drive. Any ideas?
eMac Mac OS X (10.4.3)

I have the same issue and the iPod wont reset.

I have an iMac running Lion and W7 with boot camp . It has been operating flawlessly until I went to reboot into Mac tonight. Screen went black, and system is unresponsive. I've tried force quitting and turning power off. Hard drive starts but that's it..

I have a 5 month old iMac running Lion and W7 with the latest version of boot camp . It has been operating flawlessly until I went to reboot into Mac tonight. Screen went black, and system is unresponsive. I've tried force quitting and turning power off. Hard drive starts, there's a small amount of drive activity and that's it.

Hi Jane, your info may still be there, look in the Users folder at root of the drive, how many users are there there?
It sounds like this may have happened...
Return to default desktop, apparent "loss" of home directory, (it can happen spontaneously too)...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107854

Hard drive upgrade on 13" MBP sudden motion sensor compatibility

Hello,
I'm planning on upgrading the hard drive in my 13" MBP (aluminium unibody) and I've read a lot of posts regarding the sudden motion sensor conflicts with OS X 10.6.2. I'd like to know if the Western Digital 500GB Scorpio Blue here (http://www.dabs.com/products/western-digital-500gb-scorpio-blue-5400rpm-sata-300 -8mb-58P6.html) would suffer from the conflict (I'm not sure if "Shock Guard" = sudden motion sensor). I don't know if its a simple yes/no or whether its drive / mac specific.
If it would be a problem does anyone have a suggestion for a guaranteed compatible 500Gb hard drive (5400 rpm is fine)?
Any thoughts are much appreciated, thanks for your help!

Western Digital Lists their drive features as:
* IntelliSeek™ - IntelliSeek technology calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.
* SecurePark™ - WD's SecurePark technology parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface resulting in improved long term reliability due to less head wear, and improved shock tolerance.
* ShockGuard™ - WD's ShockGuard technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks during shipping and handling and in daily operation.
* Free-fall Sensor - As an added layer of protection, if the drive (or the system it's in) is dropped while in use, WD's free-fall sensor detects that the drive is falling and, in less than 200 milliseconds, parks the head off the disks to help prevent damage and data loss.
* WhisperDrive™ - WD's exclusive WhisperDrive technology combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms that result in one of the quietest 2.5-inch drives on the market.
The Free Fall Sensor is the equivalent of the Sudden Motion Sensor. Looking at the specs for the drive you linked to... they list the following features:
Shock Guard, WhisperDrive, SecurePark
As they do not list Free Fall Sensor, I'm guessing this model does not have one so it should not conflict with the internal Sudden Motion Sensor in your MacBook.

Just bought a new MacBook Pro. Would like to transfer my Waves plugins from My old Hard Drive into my new MBP. IS there s simple way to do this?

Just bought a new MacBook Pro. Would like to transfer my Waves plugins from My old Hard Drive into my new MBP. Is there a simple way to do this?

Hi
The easiest and most reliable way would be to download the installer from Waves and re-install.
CCT

Before Mac OS X lion install I had over 50% free hard drive space on new MBP, but now my hard drive is full without me doing anything! How do I fix this??? Or should I just revert to Snow Leopard???

Before Mac OS X lion install I had over 50% free hard drive space on new MBP, but now my hard drive is full without me doing anything! How do I fix this??? Or should I just revert to Snow Leopard???

Sounds like the Time Machine Local Backup. Try turning Time Machine Off in System Preferences to verify.
See: OS X Lion: About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs
But, your real problem is
I forgot to mention that I tried to use Disk Utility to Verify Disk, but it cannot. I get red errors that say the MacHD is corrupt and needs to be repaired. It says that in order to do this I need to use the Disk Utility on the install disk, but Lion doesn't have one!
Boot into Lion's Recovery (Hold ⌘R on Boot), select Disk Utility and then select Macintosh HD and click [Repair Disk]
Tony

How do i upgrade my iMac to two TB hard drive start to finish?

How do I upgrade my Imac to two TB hard drive start to finish?

Those are definitely good drives. The OP lists his iMac as a 2011 unit, so it should have a Thunderbolt port on it. If money isn't an object, he could probably put together a RAID unit using Thunderbolt. I think OWC is selling an Thunderbolt hub of some sort. He could do all this, get good performance, and not even need to bother cracking the case. It's a lot easier and convenient working on an external drive than it is having to service an internal drive. He just needs to steer clear of some of the low power/backup drives.
Just my two cents, of course.

Hard Drive Replacement for 2012 MBP

I am working on replacing the hard drive in my 2012 MBP. I have a 500 GB, solid state drive. I looked at the drives at OWC and found two drives I think are worth considering.
(1) A pure solid state drive with 1.0 TB. This is ~$580. Expensive, but 1.0 TB and all SSD.
(2) A Hybrid drive with a total of 1.0 TB. However, only 8 GB is flash storage. But I can get the kit for around $100. I’m wondering, though, what kind of speed/performance issues am I likely going to encounter or notice with this change?
Any feedback is welcomed. Thanks,
Jeff

If I were you, I would stay with a straight SSD - a hybrid drive is going to seem slow by comparison and since you're accustomed to SSD performance, I think you would definitely notice a 'slow down' in performance.
Right now, the only 1TB drives I am recommending are the Crucial M550 and the Samsung EVO. What brand are you looking at on the OWC website?
Clinton

How much noise should the hard drive make on a MBP early 2011?

Had since May/June last year i5 13" and only since I applied all updates few weeks ago it seems to be louder than it was before?
It sounds like a fan but isn't... obviously. Right hand side of track pad, and covering it, in fact just touching it dampens it to barely audible. Is that normal or has something gone a bit weird? A constant fan noise, which isn't the fan is now there permanently.

How much noise should the hard drive make on a MBP early 2011?
None.
The machine should only make noise if the Superdrive is being used or the CPU's heavily used, going by my Early 2011 17".
It sounds like a fan but isn't... obviously. Right hand side of track pad, and covering it, in fact just touching it dampens it to barely audible. Is that normal or has something gone a bit weird? A constant fan noise, which isn't the fan is now there permanently.
It's possible it wasn't installed correctly and/or the case is slightly off so it's resonating the hard drive vibrations.
Make sure you have a internet connection (don't move) and reboot the machine holding the d key down like forever and Hardware Test will run.
Backup your data off the machine, if the hard drive dies under 1 year or three years with Applecare, then go get a new one. else you can replace it yourself with a better one and not void your warranty if you don't break anything doing so. Add more RAM while your at it.
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/
As you know Mac's are made by hand by young Chinese women working 12 hour shifts performing the same function every 7 seconds for only $1.20 a hour. They live 7 to a box room and have to pay 70¢ a meal.
All in all I would say they are very tired, and it's possilbe a few defects made it to your machine.

Can I use hard drive cable from 15" MBP in 13" MBP?

I'll start of with the tl;dr:
My mid 2012 13" MBP is acting up and I believe it's the hard drive cable that is broken. Thing is, I've got an early 2011 15" MBP with broken GPU. Can I salvage that cable and use in my 13" or will something go to ****?
Problem in general is my 13" MBP doesn't work properly with the connected hard drive. I can boot from an external drive without any issues and I can even see the internal one (luckily I could rescue all my files this way, albeit it transfering them was slow as ****) but I can't boot from the internal one, the computer just stucks on the apple logo forever.
I've also tried reinstalling the OS and managed to start the installer but after installing for roughly 5 hours it got stuck at "less than one minute remaning" over the night so I killed it. Then I tried putting the hard drive in a USB-case and it worked fine. And then I tried another working hard drive as the internal drive and experienced the exact same problem.
Edit: spelling From googling I've concluded that the mid 2012 13" MBP has had issues with broken hard drive cables, so I figured I'd try that. But it would be nice if I didn't have to buy a new one and wait for it to ship
Any help is welcome!

" I've got an early 2011 15" MBP with broken GPU."
You know there's a recall on that model:
Apple Recall:
https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/
Yah don't think swapping the cables will work. Since there's a recall on your 15" I wouldn't go messing around inside least you get rejected for recall for modding.

Hard Drive Formatting Issues - 2011 MBP

I have a late 2011 Macbook pro that started acting up a few weeks ago. Took it to an Apple store for a consultation and they came to the conclusion that part of my hard-drive not functioning properly. It just so happened to be the portion that had the bootup info on it (according to the tech). Rather than pay to have Apple install a new drive, I decided to go for it on my own as I've built more than a dozen PC's over the last 3 years, swapping out a hard drive is not a big deal to me. Even the tech at the store told me I shouldn't have any issues.
So I disconnected the battery, installed the new drive, inserted the disk that came with my MBP and I get nothing but a grey screen after the DVD drive makes noise reading the DVD for several minutes. I did some searching online and found that I could try to download the disk via holding Command + R at startup (just in case something on the physical DVD wasn't reading properly). The Command + R function shows me my wifi, connects, and downloads what it needs to, but I once again end up with nothing, but a grey or blue screen. I've tried two hard drives, both with the DVD and Command + R function several times now to no avail.
Am I missing a step here or could there be something else wrong with my machine? Are there any other utilities built into the machine I could be running?
I installed a Western Digital 7200 RPM, 500GB drive. Same specs as my original drive, but different manufacturer. I researched and found several other reviews of people using this drive in MBP's.
I re-formatted the original drive a few years back with the same DVD and no issues. I have no backups or other drives to go off of. I was running Windows 7 through boot-camp. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your suggestions.   It is definitely not a dirty disk, damaged disk, or the optical drive. If the optical drive or disk had anything to do with the issue at hand, a remote recovery from Apple's servers (Command +R) would have worked (failed several times - it connects to Apple's servers and downloads the recovery, but screen goes blue or grey the same as it does with the DVD, after the download completes and when recovery tries to initialize).
Like I said in my last post (that was edited by the mods, probably bc I linked the class action site). The issue here is a failed GPU on the Logic Card. Genius got it wrong here when I went to the store. If I felt like wasting any more of my time and money I'd take the scrapheap to the store and let them put in a new hard drive and pay their labor to then be told after the fact that I need a new logic board.
After reading the other thread (Macbook Pro (15" early 2011) horizontal lines on screen and not booting...?) - and reading ALL PAGES, I'm certain the hard drive was never the issue here. The thread I linked explains several others having the same symptoms my laptop started with (the screen jumping around and lines on the screen) before complete failure of the system. Several others in that thread have had the same problems trying to reformat as I am having. The symptoms and results are all the same. There is a class action lawsuit ongoing for this issue as there have been many hardware failures on these GPUs from this model year. The Hardware checks I'm running and the ones Genius ran simply didn't pick up on the issue. Others in that thread have even had replacements fail and the replacements only carry a 90 day warranty. At this point, it's a 3 year old machine that needs a new logic board, and a new battery, not a worthwhile investment of $300-$500 in my opinion.
Thanks again for your help.

How should I format and partition my two new hard drives in a 2010 MBP?

My good old mid-2010 13" MBP just lost its stock hard drive. I've decided to keep the laptop, set aside the defunct drive for future data recovery and pop two new drives in the computer along with a 8GB ram upgrade (two 4g ddr3 chips).
The two drives I'm working with now are a 256GB Crucial MX100 SSD (intended for my OS and startup) and an HGST 1TB Travelstar (for apps and storage) that I'm popping into the optical bay [via conversion tray].
I'm putting everything together myself then taking the build to tekserve (or the apple store? which should I go to for OS re-install and formatting help? ) to re-install my original OS (snow leopard) or mountain lion. i cant find my recovery disks and also can't download mountain lion on another comp. to boot my laptop build with.
Is it okay to just throw the drives in myself and let pros format them for me? I know i should be installing the OS myself but all of my workaround options are fleeting due to time constraints... gotta get my OG setup up and running.
Thanks everyone.

sageakash,
I have the same model MacBook Pro as you. If the 1 TB Travelstar HDD is a SATA III disk, then you might have trouble with it in the optical bay due to the connecting cable. To minimize problems, put a SATA II disk rather than a SATA III disk into the optical bay.
If you want your MacBook Pro’s original iLife apps to be installed on your new disks, then you’ll need to have Snow Leopard installed first, even if your target OS is Mountain Lion; they can’t be subsequently installed from the grey Applications Install DVD once a newer version of OS X is on your boot volume.
What is your concern with pros formatting your disks? What’s “OG”?

Is my hard drive starting to go? (MBP 1.83)

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