MBP Hard-drive / Fan Noise

My macbook pro has started to make a funny noise, at first I thought it was the fan, but it's on the left hand side of the trackpad so I am assuming it's the hard drive?
It sounds like a fan / slight grinding noise it's not too loud but it's noticeable and irritating.
Anyone had this issue before or have any suggestions on how to fix?
I've not long had my machine back from a previous repair and I can't afford to loose it for another month, I'm a freelance designer, last time I took it to my apple reseller store (Bristol) and was told it would be fixed in a week, it ended up being a month, and that resulted in my loosing a month wages. What are my options?

Also, get a firewire external hard drive and baak up all your data and keep it backed up, just in case. In the meantime, you could use the Disk Utility on your install disc #1 to verify and repair if necessary both permissions and the start up disk.
There is also a little utility called "SMART Reporter" that you might like:
http://homepage.mac.com/julianmayer/smartreporter/index.html
This will allow you to install a hard drive icon in your menu bar that will let you monitor the SMART status of your hard drive. SMART status doesn't guarantee your hard drive has no problems, but if the icon turns from green to red you know you have to worry.
Good luck!

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Beginning in late 2009 Apple began using HD's that had the heat sensor integrated into it, if you are absolutely positive your replacement drive has an integrated sensor in it then your problem might be solved by doing a SMC reset. If you haven't done one before here are the instructions:
SMC RESET
• Shut down the computer.
• Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
• Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
• Release the power button.
• Attach the computers power cable.
• Press the power button to turn on the computer.
PRAM RESET
• Shut down the computer.
• Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
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Hi, have you tried the Boot Camp forum ?
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Laptop is about a month old - And I desperately need a hard drive upgrade (at the time of purchase could not afford).
Thank you so much!
~aj

ajsonnick wrote:
I was told though that doing this voids my warranty with apple on my computer?
You were told wrong. Apple considers the hard drive and RAM to be user-replaceable parts. If they didn't, they wouldn't provide instructions for changing them yourself.
What type of HDD would you reccomend me purchasing? Looking to get something 750GB+
I favor Seagate. Others have different preferences. Avoid so-called "green" drives.

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I have been using PCs all my life, when the whole world was trying to stop me from getting a MAC. I went ahead believing that Apple have taken steps to improve their product. All my previous laptops works perfertly fine for at least 3 years. My reasoning is MBP cannot be such a lousy product that cannot last that long. Or is Apple confirming the truth that their MACs will not last their users anything more than 1 year thus encouraging users to buy additonal warranty.
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I hope some one can give me some answers, it is not about the money but the data that stores inside that has become too damaging for my business.

"Is Apple product so unreliable that we have to buy additional protection plan from day 1"
By no means. Don't take some salesperson's attempt to push AppleCare on you as any indication other than her personal opinion. Sometimes things break. It's unfortunate, but it happens. If things didn't fail, we wouldn't need warranties at all. And with electronic devices it's more likely to happen early in their life than it would be later. I might point out that Apple buys hard drives from the same companies that every other computer manufacturer does, so the hard drives have exactly the same chance of failure in a Mac as they would have in any other computer. And you have a one-year warranty on your computer so having the extended warranty at this point is irrelevant.
s Apple confirming the truth that their MACs will not last their users anything more than 1 year thus encouraging users to buy additonal warranty.
No more than any other company that sells an extended warranty for their product is saying that. If you want to purchase an extended warranty, it's up to you. The majority of computer owners, for almost any brand, never have need for a warranty at all, much less an extended warranty. But out-of-warranty repairs can be expensive enough - and again, this is true of any computer, particularly laptop computers where the components tend to be more expensive - that many people opt for extended warranties to ensure that for the duration of the extended warranty there will be no unexpected failures and consequent costs. It's like buying fire insurance for your house; the likelihood that your house will catch fire is small, but the cost involved if you don't have insurance is so great that I'd wager you do indeed have fire insurance if you own a house.
it is not about the money but the data that stores inside that has become too damaging for my business.
That's why you make backups. Any hard drive can fail. Or your laptop might get lost or stolen which would of course not be Apple's fault nor the fault of any of their component suppliers.
Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

Excessive hard drive seek noise

Any ideas? Since a few days ago my (2 month old) T500 has been bugging the heck out of me (understatement) with this constant hard drive seek noise. You normally expect short bursts of it when accessing large amounts of data etc. but this has been literally non-stop, anytime the computer is on (regardless if anyone is actually doing anything on it).
Message Edited by timosy on 05-18-2009 01:24 AM

Hello timosy,
it would be helpfull if you can tell us your OS and did you install anything before this did happen?
Also I would suggest to download Process Explorer from Microsoft page and tell us, which process make your hdd running that way.
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Hard drive fan comes on full blast for no apparent reason!

I have had this problem since buying my new 27in iMac. It happens maybe once or twice a month. I took it to apple and they said "everything is ok".
I come home from work at night and the machine sounds like a leaf blower on my desk. I pull up iStat widget and it reports the following
CPU:
User 0%
System 0%
Nice 0%
Idle 99-100%
Memory:
Wired 587mb
Active 764mb
Inactive 301mb
Free 2.29gb
Temps:
HD Macintosh 95
CPU 86
Ambient 65
GPU diode 103
GPU heatsink 101
mem contoller 103
Northbridge 131
Optical 92
Fans:
Optical Drive 998rpm
Hard Drive 5272rpm
CPU 940
So it is obvious that the HD fan is the one making all the noise, the question is why is it running at that rpm? The machine is cool to the touch and has been at idle all night. Mac Genious had me reset the SMC in several different ways and if that didnt work, bring it in to the store. I did, and he said everything looks fine and passed all diagnostics. He said next time it happens to go into activity monitor and see what is creating the most CPU usage NOT ONE TASK IS USING MORE THAN .9% of CPU. I see nothing out of the ordinary in there. I think a fix for this would be to figure out why the unit doesnt ever actually go to sleep on its own. As soon as I force it to sleep the fans stop and when I wake it they stay off.

Hi Zoe,
Welcome to Lenovo Community!
As per the query we understood that you are facing fan issue in your G500 laptop.
Please try to boot the system to safe mode and check for the issue.
Also perform a clean boot and check for the issue, if still the issue persists try to update the BIOS and check for the issue.
Click here for the BIOS update.
Hope this helps. Do post back if issue persists!
Best regards,
Ashwin.S
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How to eliminate hard drive whirring noise?

My hard drive has recently started emitting a fan-like noise (in fact, when I first noticed it I thought it was the fan). The sound comes from under the right wrist pad and when I put my wrist on it (e.g. when typing) the noise is greatly diminished (about 20% of what it is without my wrist on it).
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Hi there,
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Maybe someone can tell me where to buy one of those incredible foils :-))

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Only way I can explain the sound would be it's similar to the sound effects in movies when a spider would crawl around the floor, but only in 2 seconds spurts.
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-gabe

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