Macbook makes chirping sound? Is it a faulty hard drive?

My late 2008 macbook's hard drive makes a pretty loud chirping sound when I open the programs Pro Tools or Adobe Photoshop. The beachball pops up and the HD "chirps" and the computer freezes for around 10 minutes and then all of a sudden it starts working again with the applications running flawlessly. I have no problems when using Firefox or Preview or browsing through my files; Which makes me think that its not a problem with the HD but maybe a problem with the programs i'm running. The HD sometimes also makes the noise when i first power the computer on but it does not freeze.
btw: this has been happening for well over 2 months. I already backed up all my data a while back to an external HD just in case the HD is faulty.

It sounds like a hard drive issue. Try reformatting it using "Zero all data" option under "Security Options" in your Disk Utility.
Dave M.
MacOSG Founder/Ambassador  An Apple User Group  iTunes: MacOSG Podcast
Macsimum News Associate Editor  Creator of 'Mac611 - Mobile Mac Support'

Similar Messages

  • I had a repair done on my MacBook Pro and had to have a new hard drive installed. The Apple Auth Repair Shop then updated the OS from 10.6.8 to 10.7.5. Now my iPhoto v 9.2.3 will not open and it sounds like it will not work with this OS. Can you plea

    I had a repair done on my MacBook Pro and had to have a new hard drive installed. The Apple Auth Repair Shop then updated the OS from 10.6.8 to 10.7.5. Now my iPhoto v 9.2.3 will not open and it sounds like it will not work with this OS. Can you please advise?

    You may need many other updates to retain compatibility with Lion. I suggest you reinstall Snow Leopard. Unfortunately, you will need to erase the drive first. Be sure to backup your data if you haven't done so already.
    Clean Install of Snow Leopard
    Be sure to make a backup first because the following procedure will erase
    the drive and everything on it.
         1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
             with your computer.  Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
             After the chime press and hold down the  "C" key.  Release the key when you see
             a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
         2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
             button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
             After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
             size.)  Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.  Set the number of
             partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button
             and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended
             (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.
         3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer.  Proceed
             with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
         4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
             Assistant. After you finish Setup Assistant will complete the installation after which
             you will be running a fresh install of OS X.  You can now begin the update process
             by opening Software Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your
             installation current.
    Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

  • I have replaced my faulty hard drive on my macbook air 1.1 and need to reinstall the original software where can in find this on the apple web site?

    I have replaced my faulty hard drive on my macbook air 1.1 with a new ssd, I need to reinstall the original software,where can I find this on the apple site?

    There is no download for the software.  The factory software that you are looking for is called ilife.  It is all of the software that would have came preinstalled with your mac on your original hard drive when you first bought it.  You will have to get new software on your computer.  This might actually be a great opurtunity to upgrade to Lions.  Search the Lions software in the mac store and it will come up.  Click add to cart and check out.  The price for it is $20.  I defientely recomend Lions, it has alot of new great features.  Then wate for the install disk to come in the mail.  when it come just pop it in and follow the step by step instructions.  If you dont want to upgrade to lions however you can download the ilife package from apple.com for a small price.  Hope this helps.

  • Stuck in calculating time remaining, what do i do, its my second airport time capsule that i purchased as the first had a faulty hard drive, why is this soo hard!

    This is my second airport time capsule as the first i purchaed had a faulty hard drive, so now, its been a while i keep trying hoping it will work but its always stuck in 'calculating time remaining'. i thought it was my wifi so i connected directly to the capsule using an ethernet cord, bought an adaptor as i have the new macbook air (4m old) 13 inch, still not working. Help please,i am thinknig of just returning it and getting a less expeecsive and easier one to use.
    D

    Mavericks is the pain here.
    It can lose the network connection half way through a backup.
    When you connect by ethernet (good to get that.. hope it is the thunderbolt to ethernet).. did you turn off the wireless.. this is important.. nothing changes if the wireless is still on.
    I recommend you start over. Keep the wireless on for this part.
    Stop the backup.
    Factory reset the TC.
    Redo the TC setup but this time use all short names, no spaces, pure alphanumeric.
    I know the airport utility will suggest apple names..
    Fred Blog's Airport Time Capsule.
    Don't fall for it.
    Use TCgen5
    For wireless name use TCwifi (or if you want more control, TC24ghz and change 5ghz to TC5ghz).
    Wipe the current TM setup.
    Use A4 to reset it. http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
    With wireless off now and just ethernet connection try the backup again.
    No luck manually mount the TC hard disk in finder. Go/Connect to Server.
    AFP://TCname.local (replace TCname with your new nice short name.. and use the domain which is local by default).
    OR
    Use AFP://10.0.1.1 (Replace with whatever IP the TC uses.. but it must be static.. easy for router mode.. not so easy if the TC is in bridge mode).
    The Computer will request the password.. type in whatever password you used for disk access.. by default it ithe device password. If you did not change it then default is public.
    This setup has worked for other people.
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5951390?tstart=0
    I cannot guarantee you won't need to reboot the TC oocasionally as it does fall over.
    There are other bits that I keep forgetting..
    Make sure ipv6 is set to link-local for both wireless and ethernet in the computer.
    Once you finish the main backup the short incremental backups can work over wireless.. so just turn wireless back on.

  • How do I restore my itunes library after replacing a faulty hard drive?

    How do I restore my itunes library after replacing a faulty hard drive?

    did you make a backup of your library before replacing the HD ?
    if so, how and what did you back up ?
    if not, you can redownload previous purchases ☞ Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store.
    if you have your media files on an iPod, check out this post by Zevoneer.

  • I want to make a TimeMachine backup in a new hard-drive I just bought. It says it has to erase the info but as the drive is new there's no info in it, so what it is going to be erased?

    I want to make a TimeMachine backup in a new hard-drive I just bought. It says it has to erase the info but as the drive is new there's no info in it, so what it is going to be erased?
    I had to format it after I bought it so that it could work with windows and Mac and I'm afraid that if I erase the info in the hard-drive, the format will also change. Is that possible to happen? Or the format will stay the same?
    Thank you

    Do you want to continue to use it to share and store files between Windows and NTFS and Mac which uses HFS?
    Maybe you need another drive. I would never have only one backup and one "live" data set.
    you probably installed something, whether it is current or well supported or not, that came with the drive to allow writing to NTFS.
    TimeMachine has to use HFS only and use Apple GPT (GUID) format.
    sometimes erase changes a drive to GUID when you click on the raw hard drive name in Disk Utility. other times you can erase a volume and leave the partition format type as is. The wording use to be clearer when people knew when and how to initialize, format and setup a drive. And sometimes a message on the screen says it will be only launches Disk Utility and not to the PARTITION tab to make changes.
    In addition to TimeMachine, having a clone of your system or data or both can be very useful as well. Drives fail.
    And with a MacBook Air you probably have a smallish internal hard drive and might need to store media files and data on another drive to supplement the internal SSD.

  • Faulty hard drives and recovery sets

    Regarding having a faulty hard drive (no recovery partition), if you and a friend have the same computer model you could buy a new hard drive (maybe 120GB) and clone the good one from one computer to use in the one that had a bad hard drive then make a recovery set from the clone as well as the original, I did this and it's worked.
    I have two HP HDX9000 laptops of which one is slightly cosmetically damaged and its original hard drive died so Windows Vista was put on an unpartitioned 500GB hard drive which will go with the unit. I took the OS drive from the 'new' laptop and cloned it so the old one would once again have a recovery partition and created recovery discs from both.

    Regarding having a faulty hard drive (no recovery partition), if you and a friend have the same computer model you could buy a new hard drive (maybe 120GB) and clone the good one from one computer to use in the one that had a bad hard drive then make a recovery set from the clone as well as the original, I did this and it's worked.
    I have two HP HDX9000 laptops of which one is slightly cosmetically damaged and its original hard drive died so Windows Vista was put on an unpartitioned 500GB hard drive which will go with the unit. I took the OS drive from the 'new' laptop and cloned it so the old one would once again have a recovery partition and created recovery discs from both.

  • Method to move "iLife Sound Effects" to an external hard drive?

    I would like to move my "iLife Sound Effects" to an external hard drive. Is there an easy method? I then want to permanently delete them on my boot up drive as well. Thanks.

    My iTunes library is set up the way I said in the top post and works totally fine.
    Yes, and that is the default structure to which I was referring.  iTunes will organize it that way automatically unless people do start changing settings (in which case they should know what they are doing and how iTunes works with library files and media structure.)
    Both ways work, the advantages of mine would be that should iTunes try looking fo a library, it will always be in the default location.
    It makes people think they have to change media location in preferences.  They do not unless they want to relocate media only and leave other things on their internal drive (in which case there is no point in copying library files to the external, and you certainly wouldn't want to then delete them from your internal).
    Downside is that then should someone move their iTunes library to anther computer they need to remember to get those library files on the external hard drive.
    Just copy the whole iTunes folder and it will get the library files to the other drive in one step, along with all the other files.
    Your post has good stuff but it makes a move appear intimidating and look like people have to do a lot of organizing to move the collection.  It also throws in  extra steps (namely altering preference settings) that could cause confusion or even make a mess of things.  If people leave iTunes to default preference settings (which most people do) the move summarizes into a short line:  Copy a folder and hold an extra button the next time you start iTunes.
    Note that the instructions in the link I provided earlier do also include many steps, but those are to ensure that everybody does have it all organized correctly before simply copying the iTunes folder.  In the end it is just a simple action.

  • Greeting,  I want to reformat my external hard drive using Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted ) but before formatting it, I want to make sure that if I loose the hard drive or the hard drive get stolen, no one will be able to retrieve or recover the in

    Greeting,
    I want to reformat my external hard drive using Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted ) but before formatting it, I want to make sure that if I loose the hard drive or the hard drive get stolen, no one will be able to retrieve or recover the information on it so could you tell me what kind of encryption will be used or is there any way to recover the information?
    Thanks!

    I think FileVault is used to encryp internal hard drive but I wanna encrypt an external hard drive with Mac OS Extended Journaled Encrypted which is completely different!

  • I connected my external hard drive to my new imac to put all of the information from my macbook onto it. i have been working on the macbook now and want to reconnect the external hard drive so my imac is updated with the work. How is that done?

    I connected my external hard drive to my new imac to put all of the information from my macbook onto it. I have been working on the macbook now and want to reconnect the external hard drive so my imac is updated with the work. How is that done? or is it possible?

    As I said, I don't use Time Machine, so it'd be best to wait for an "expert" answer, but, with my very limited knowledge, I'd say: probably not - so, for now, I'd suggest you read up on Time Machine:
    http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html
    http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=search&src=support_site.home.search&local e=en_US&q=time%20machine
    And, you might be attracting more knowledgeable answers if you were to post this question in the Time Machine Forum (part of the Snow Leopard forums).

  • MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009) - Maximum internal hard drive size and speed?

    What is the maximum size of hard drive and speed for an internal hard drive to my Macbook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009), please?
    I bought myself a Technics 1TB, 7200 rpm internal hardrive. Made a clone successfully in Super Duper.
    It fits, but It is not available for starting up my Macbook Pro. Not available in System Prefs, but visible and grey in Disc Utility.
    Although it starts up my Mac Pro just fine.. but not my Macbook Pro.
    Is there a limit of hard drive specifics?
    What is the maximum size of hard drive and speed for an internal hard drive to my Macbook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009), please?

    Thanks for the reply
    I cloned the Technics HDD ( 2,5" HGST Travelstar 7K1000 - 1 TB : HTS721010A9E630) from the MBP.
    I tried to boot it up with my Technincs ( 2,5" HGST Travelstar 7K1000 - 1 TB : HTS721010A9E630) installed in my MBP (as my internal hard drive).

  • After I installed Lion, my MacBook Pro can no longer detect my external hard drives or my USB flash drives. What should I do?

    After I installed Lion, my MacBook Pro can no longer detect my external hard drives or my USB flash drives. What should I do?

    And me -- My Mac at work running Snow Leopard reads the drive normally. My home Mac (on Lion) can't even find it....
    Yet another Leo let-down.....

  • My MacBook Pro no longer "sees" my LACie external hard drive

    Hello,
    I need you help with this one. My MacBook Pro no longer "sees" my LACie external hard drive. In the System Profiler (under FireWire) the drive is listed as:
    FireWire Bus:
    Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
    Unknown Device:
    Manufacturer: Unknown
    Model: Unknown
    Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
    Connection Speed: Unknown
    Can anyone help me to correct this issue? Thank you in advance for your help!!
    Nat

    I was finally able to resolve this issue. I went to LaCie's site and went to the support area to find troubleshooting steps for my particular drive. It turns out that the problem was corrected when I swapped the power supply cord of the "troubled" drive with another LaCie drive that I have and that seemed to resolve the problem. Thank you Tony for your help. I appreciate you guys!
    Thanks,
    Nat

  • My itunes library was on my PC.  About two years ago I switched it to my Seagate server/hardrive. (itunes-preferences-advanced-change library). Last summer (2012) I bought a macbook, which seems to access the seagate server hard drive fine for word docs,

    My itunes library was on my PC.  About two years ago I switched it to my Seagate server/hardrive. (itunes-preferences-advanced-change library). Last summer (2012) I bought a macbook, which seems to access the seagate server hard drive fine for word docs, excel spreadsheets,etc. It also seems to have started its own library which is not complete. My PC died this summer (I still have it though).
    Now when syncing any of the multiple devices (ipods,ipads, iphones) that we have with my mac book, itunes states that "an error occurred" or the "app cannot be found".  Itunes wants me to erase the device and sync with my macbook. The message "The iPhone “Renee’s iPhone” is synced with another iTunes library on “Renee PC”. Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync with this iTunes library? An iPhone can be synced with only one iTunes library at a time. Erasing and syncing replaces the contents of this iPhone with the contents of this iTunes library."appears.
    Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
    Renee

    u can give try to using external enclosre and backup ur files. I hope u will get files back. or using external enclosre with ur hdd boot into Linux and try to mount ur harddisk.
    there are multiple no of tutorial to mount apple partion in Linux.

  • I have a macbook pro, and i want to transfer my hard drive from my macbook, but the display drivers and such are different.  How do i do this?

    I have a macbook pro, and i want to transfer my hard drive from my macbook (500g), but the display drivers and such are different.  How do i do this and is it possible?
    The Macbook Pro has Mac OS X 10.4.11 (70g hard drive)
    The Macbook has Mac OS X 10.6.8 (500g hard drive)

    The MacBook's hard drive lacks the necessary hardware drivers to boot the MacBook Pro even though it has a much newer OS on it; that's why simply moving it into the Pro doesn't work. Presumably you have a very old MB Pro, because only the very first MB Pro model (produced January to May 2006) was ever offered with an 80GB hard drive. Are you sure you want to move your big drive into such an old machine? The MacBook must be newer, because the first MacBook was introduced just as the first Pro model was discontinued.

Maybe you are looking for