Noisy Hard Drive IS NORMAL!

I just got back from my local Apple Store, where I exchanged my less than 2 week old 5G iPod because of the clunking/clicking hard drive noise that many people have been noticing.
They had many 5G iPods on display, so I went to each one, loaded up the U2 video, and listened closly to see if I could hear the clicks of the hard drive while it works to load up the video. Guess what? They ALL had the same clicking noisy hard drive, same as the one I had just returned. And also, my new one does the same exact thing.
So there you have it. Guess this is just the normal operation of these new hard drives. Now, the noise I am referring to is the clicking/clunking sound when you load up a video file or a photo album. This sound is completely normal. So, no worries! Enjoy that new iPod!!
Cheers...Kerry

it's a hard drive. of course its goining to make noise, doesn't your computer make noise when it starts up? Just about every kind of hard drive makes noise, its normal.

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New iMac: Screen Issues and Noisy Hard Drive

Hello,
I'm writing regarding my new 27" iMac which I purchased just under a week ago (spec: 3.1GHz Intel Core i5, 1TB HDD, 4GB RAM).
When I got my iMac home and unboxed it, all was fine, however once I had began to install some applications and use them, I noticed an unusual issue with the screen. I had a Skype window open on the left hand side of my screen, with an ongoing chat, Obviously, the chat 'stream' was moving, but the menu items on the far left remained the same. The iMac had been on for about 10mins, with the Skype window open for the same duration. After which, I opened iPhoto, and made it full screen, filling my screen with a dark grey background. I could still see the outline of the text from my Skype window through the iPhoto window. Thinking the window may have been semi-transparent, I closed the Skype window, however when I re-fullscreened iPhoto, the test was still there, as if it was burnt into the screen.
I understand the concept of screen burn, but surely this shouldn't happen after just 10mins? It's nothing permanent, as it fades away again within another 5mins or so, but it is annoying knowing that I can't leave a window open for very long without worrying I will have text burnt into my screen for a period of time. As a graphic designer, I could be working on images that are dark, and likewise, I don't want to see remains of my chat or emails over the top of my design work.
Has anyone else had this issue? Is this an issue that can be repaired by myself (eg. installing a firmware update, although I have all the latest updates from Software Update)? Or should I just return my iMac to the store and get them to look at it? I'm worried that if I take it back, they may fail to see the issue, as the lighing is a lot different in the store to at home.
The other issue I am experiencing is I have a very noisy hard drive, that seems to click and make a grumbling noise rather a lot. Obviously at times when the computer is working hard, this is to be expected (I think), although most of the time it is grumbling away whilst I'm just browsing in Safari with one tab open.
Has anyone else experienced this issue, taken it back and has a successful replacement? I've read that it could be to do with Mac OS X Lion, because people have reported that their hard drive ran silently on Snow Leopard but has got noisier with Lion. Should I wait for a Lion update before returning it? Other than the issues above, everything is fine.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I look forward to someone being able to shine some light on my issues.

Thanks for the advice.
Today, I returned my iMac to the Apple Premium Resellers where I purchased it. The helpful chap there looked at my screen and acknowledged the issue, before giving me a brand new iMac.
My previous model came with Snow Leopard pre-installed, which I upgraded to Lion. This new, second iMac is a relatively new one as it has Lion pre-installed. Feeling hopeful, I've just arrived home and unpackaged my new computer.
The result? EXACTLY the same issue. My Twitter window on the far left of my display has been open for no longer than about 7 or 8 mins, and I can clearly see the display pictures from my follwees burnt into the screen when I full screen a dark app like Snow Leopard.
I'm wondering whether this is a Lion issue? Should I wait for a software update before returning it again? It's not something that's going to be annoying on a day-to-day basis, but now that I know it's doing it, I can't help but keep checking when I open iPhoto.
PEOPLE WITH NEW 27" iMAC's: Would you please perform the following test for me and let me know the results?
1. Open up a white backgrounded application, such as Twitter, Skype, or Safari.
2. Leave it on screen (anywhere, but far left seems to be worst) for about 5 to 10mins.
3. Open up iPhoto with it's grey full screen background, or set your wallpaper to a flat colour dark grey.
4. Now minimise the white backgrounded windows, and switch to a grey background with no windows in front of it.
5. Look carefully at your screen: can you still see an outline of/text from the window in the position that it was, like it's burnt into the screen?
Thanks in advance to anyone that can perform this for me.

1 day old mbp, hard drive crackle normal?

I've been waiting to pick up a MBP for several weeks now and last night I finally bit the bullet.
I've read about the whine issues, heat issues and crackling speakers that some have experienced.
Last night when running updates, I noticed that the hard drive crackles/buzzes when reading/writing. I know hearing the hard drive is normal but the sound isn't of the drive spinning but more of a scratchy irregular buzz.
Noise only happens when access the HD, like starting apps...it's just that I've never heard anything similar, I'm used to hearing hard drives whine while they spin.
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.
Maybe I'm just paranoid because I love the machine but just wondering if anyone has any thoughts...btw if i remember correctly it's a week 17 machine.
-gabe

Sound is normal. Certain drives are louder then others, the ones that Apple uses are known to be particularly loud. It shouldn't be regular at all but instead a sporadic sounds whenever the drive is written to or read from. If the sound does become noticeably louder or changes its pattern, it could be an indication of a drive failure. If you are worried about the status of your drive, you can check the SMART status, which will inform you on the drives overall health.

Powerbook G4 noisy hard drive- is it coming to an end?

I have had my powerbook for four years and it has done hard work on the road in inhospitable places for most of that time. Now that I'm back home, I've noticed that it has started to sound like a lawnmower (or is that some kind of fan inside?) and it gets very hot.
Should I be preparing for the worst, or is this normal?
Many thanks, Rose

Hello Rose,
What temperature is hot? Download and install a free widget called, iStat Pro. It will appear in the dashboard and give the operation temps of many parts of your machine. The Powerbook's normal operating temp should max out at around 65-67'C. This is normal! As for the noise: When hard drives start to fail they do get noisy. There is a very distinctive whirring sound as the drive starts up and the machine will become sluggish. There is also the high pitched screaming sound as the drive fails and stalls. However, if you think the sound is just that of noisy fans, it is much more likely to be just that. Have you ever opened the machine and cleaned it? When you do, you are sure to find a major (and slightly disgusting) build up of dust and grit around the fans making them noisy and inefficient. You can try cleaning them although, the noise may not go away because the damage has already been done to the small bearings controlling them, thus making them noisy.
Should I be preparing for the worst
Regardless of the symptoms of this event you should always be prepared for the worst when it comes to computers. All computer users should develop stringent back-up plans. I use a collection of large capacity USB flash drives (8GB) as my back-up database. As long as they are stored correctly their shelf life is much greater than that of DVD-R discs (5 years max) and much more stable than an external hard drive (life expectancy unknown and unpredictable). It may be a little more expensive to use flash drives as back-up, but can you put a price on the digital memories of the first decade of your kids' lives?

Is my hard drive looking normal after reformatting?

I recently reformatted my hard drive and for some reason I feel like I might have done it wrong. I don't remember exactly but I have a feeling that there was at least one more sub line in disk utilities...If anyone could tell me if mine is normal and good to go, that would be great. Thank you in advance.

If you previously had a MBP non-retina there would be a Superdrive under the other disks. With retina, there is none so you are OK.

NB510 - noisy hard drive

Hi
I have just treated myself to a brand new nb510-11j and having owned and loved my old nb250 I thought this may be a better replacement as my boyfrind kept telling me the nb250 wasn't going to last forever and I should upgrade.
I recieved the new one yesterday and registered the warranty with toshiba and I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. The new one makes a low "rattle" noise from the minute I turn it on till it gets switched off. I assume it to be the hard drive but is this normal ? My mb250 ran pretty much silently and you only heard the hard drive kick in every now and then. Also it felt "warm" after a couple of hours, not boiling like an old laptop but just warm and my OLD computer never gets warm so I am a tad concerned about this too. I just need to know if it is normal or should I send it back whilst I still can ?
The other question was if I get this one upgraded to 2 Ram (which I did on the 250) is the toshiba warranty still valid ?
Many thanks
Jen x

To be honest my NB520 is pretty quiet and I dont hear anything. Im very happy with my machine. It is quiet, run perfectly and battery life is excellent. Friend of mine has NB550D and it is also extremely quiet.
As Akuma already wrote clicking noise on some HDDs is pretty normal but very annoying.
I dont want to make some panic here but I think you should exchange it and compare it with HDD on other machine.
RAM upgrade will not cancel warranty and this option is for notebook owners. My NB520 has 4GB inside.
Please post some feedback.

Noisy Hard Drive

I have the newest PB G4 12" and once in a while my hard drive spins so loud I can hear it from across the room. It tends to happen when I move the computer while it is on and the screen is open. When it spins that loudly, the computer freezes with the color wheel and then when it "calms" down the color wheel goes away. This is the second hard drive for this PB already. Has anyone else experienced this? Thanks

You really shouldn't move the computer around while it is awake and the hard drive is spinning. Think of your hard drive as a little record player. If you were to carry a record player accross the room while it was spinning you'd expect it to skip... same idea pretty much.
Are those noises of the metal-on-metal grinding variety? As with all suspect hard drives you should backup your data. This cannot be overstated.
I dunno what it is but I've replaced more hard drives in 12" powerbooks than any other model...

NOISY HARD DRIVE, CLUNKING OUT OF SLEEP

The HD is generally silent except when coming out of sleep, during which you get a fair amount of definitely mechanical clunking and clattering from the unit as it spins up. Once up and running, all noise aside from perhaps the normal slight hum/whir, are gone.
I'm fairly sure that it's done this for as long as I've had this new iMac, is not getting any worse, and hasn't so far caused any other sorts of problems at all. I suppose I might be looking for some warm 'n fuzzy feedback saying that it's no biggie, nothing to be that concerned about.
In the meantime, I keep everything backed up to two external drives and am willing to ping AppleCare on it, at least to get the problem registered with them. Any other good advice?
TIA.

Try running the Disk utility application found in the utilities folder to see if it reports any errors when you verify the disk and check permissions. Disk Utility will also report the SMART status indicating whether the drive error parameters indicate it is in a failing state that would require replacement. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. for more info regarding the capabilities of SMART. The smartest thing you mentioned is that you maintain a backup. I too maintain two separate backups just in case.

Very noisy hard drive on 8460p

Making a whirring humming sound from under base. Not the fan. Started after I downloaded Hardware diagnostics to the partition.

If it's a late 2012 mini, you should still be in your 90 day window to take advantage of Apple phone support. The numbers are here.

NOISY HARD DRIVE UNIT

Have just had this i7 for a few days now and in a quiet room, the humming noise from the unit is very noticeable. Is this a common fault? Is there a test that can be performed at home or do I have to send the unit back to apple. I'd rather not do this but any suggestions are most welcome.
T12

Aunty June, you will probably not believe this, BUT, I had placed the mac on a wooden table about 6feet x 3' 6", in size. I replaced this with a smaller table about 3' 6" x 2' 6" with a laminate top and sturdier legs. Hey presto, humming is reduced dramatically. Maybe it is that the machine just needs a very firm foundation upon which to rest. Alternatively, could the stand be causing the problem?
seems to me that the stand may be adequate for the smaller imac but needs to be improved, to cope with the additional weight which it carries on the 27" machine. Any thoughts??
Kind regards,
T12.

New Macbook Pro 15": my hard drive 7200trm makes noise....is it normal ??

Hi,
Just recieve my brand new Macbook Pro 15" i5 with a hard drive Seagate 500GB 7200rpm. And it's not silent at all!
For Macbook Pro users, if you want to know the intensity of the noise I'm talking about, download smcFanControl and put your fans to +/- 3000rpm and you will hear what I hear with my hard drive. Is this normal ?
Thanks for helping
Message was edited by: Yecc

Sorry my english is not perfect.
I didn't say to turn off the fans. I say you have to increase the speed of yours fans to 3000 rpm, for you realize the intensity of noise emitted by my hard drive. I would like your opinions if my hard drive is normal or not ? I think not, because the noise is very hard, but I would like a confirmation.
Thanks

Time Machine - hard drive failed, isn't recognized by Finder

Hi,
Yesterday I went to plug in my Time Machine external hard drive to my Macbook Pro (Mid 2010, running Mountain Lion 10.8.2). The hard drive is a 320 GB Toshiba hard drive that I salvaged from an old laptop. The EHD is in a Kingston enclosure and connects to my Mac through USB (1 cord for everything). I have been using this setup for probably about a year at least.
Anyways, when I plugged it in yesterday, it did not show up in Finder. The blue light on the outside of the enclosure was still lit, and I could hear the hard drive spinning normally. I tried a couple other USB cables, but to no avail. The USB ports work with other things (e.g. my flash drive). I turned off Time Machine, and restarted my computer several times. Nothing worked.
I went into Disk Utility, and noticed that the hard drive itself appears, but the Time Machine partition is greyed out right underneath it. DU says on the bottom that the Time Machine is Not Mounted, and gives the format (Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)) and the capacity (320 gb).
When I try to eject through DU, it gives me this message:
The disk “Time Machine” could not be unmounted.
Make sure that all applications and files are closed on this disk.
BUT, it isn't even mounted!
I figured that I would just try to erase the hard drive, since it's only a time machine backup. Nope! It hanged right at the very beginning trying to unmount the disk that isn't even mounted.
I've looked on Google and on these boards and haven't found anything that could help me...so...
Help?
Thanks!

No luck.
I clicked on the hard drive itself (Kingston 320 GB) and clicked "Erase". I waited about an hour with the only activity being a striped bar at the bottom of DU saying "Unmounting".
So I tried just erasing the Time Machine partition. I immediately got this message (or something along the lines of it): "Disk Utility cannot erase the disk. Cannot open disk."
I tried mounting and unmounting the time machine partition, but would get messages saying that the disk cannot be unmounted, and that the disk cannot be mounted. Rather contradictory!
I tried ejecting the hard drive through DU by clicking the "Eject" button, but it said it could not eject the disk because it was in use, or something along the lines of that.
Any other advice?

Incredibly slow MacBook, Internal Hard Drive issues...

Good morning everybody! I'm apologize if this post is extremely wordy...
I am extremely baffled by a particular issue with a MacBook 2.0GHz C2D which belongs to a friend of mine. The warranty is expired.
_Brief history:_
Several months ago, this MacBook could not find a bootable volume. The drive would not mount when booting from an external FireWire hard drive. It would not mount when the MacBook was put in Target Disk Mode and connected to another Mac. When booting from an external USB hard drive or with my MacBook Pro connected to the MacBook via Target Disk Mode, the MacBook booted up quickly. I came to the conclusion that the internal hard drive must have failed and needed to be replaced. Ultimately, the data was not recoverable from this drive.
I then proceeded to swap out the defective Apple OEM Seagate hard drive with a known working Apple OEM Fujitsu hard drive. When booting from the Leopard Install DVD, the MacBook would boot incredibly slow, but would finally reach the Installer Language screen. When proceeding to install Leopard, the drive would take a very long time to have data written to it, and ultimately the install failed. I removed the new hard drive from the MacBook and placed it in an external USB enclosure, attached it to the MacBook and booted from the Leopard Install DVD. Leopard would install successfully. I removed the hard drive from the enclosure and reinstalled it the MacBook. When booting from the freshly installed OS, the MacBook would take a very long time to boot. The MacBook is extremely slow!!!
I checked the Activity Monitor to ensure CPU & System Memory Usage was not going crazy. All Processes where normal with adequate CPU & Memory headroom.
I took the MacBook apart thinking that the SATA Controller Cable might be loose. No, it was firmly in place. I reassembled the MacBook and booted it up again. Still incredibly slow!
Finally, after several reboot attempts, the MacBook would book up quickly and operation was perfect. I applied all updates and continued testing the MacBook with great success. Gave my friend his MacBook back and he was grateful.
_Now for the kicker..._
My friend brought me his MacBook a week ago complaining that the MacBook was operating extremely slow (much like when I was initially testing it before). I verified the MacBook was slow when I tried using it. I tried several reboots and then it would get stuck on the gray Apple with spinning gear.
I tried booting into Single User Mode, but it gets stuck on "Waiting for root device"
I put the MacBook in Target Disk Mode and connected it to my G5 2.0GHz Dual Core. The hard drive would mount quickly on the G5 and I used Disk Utility to create a Restore Image. The disk operation would perform normally and the image would be created successfully.
I then partitioned the MacBook's hard drive when connected to the G5, ejected and proceeded to attempt OS reinstall. No dice! The hard drive is not even detected by the Disk Utility on the Leopard Install DVD.
Finally after several reattempts, the hard drive is recognized, but is extremely slow when trying to reinstall...and again, ultimately install fails. Using Disk Utility from Leopard Install DVD, the hard drive fails to unmount when I try formatting.
I don't have Apple Hardware Test disc for the MacBook or Apple Service Diagnostics disc for this model. Running TechTool Pro shows hardware to be okay, disk controller onboard the Fujitsu drive is okay, but running SMART & Surface Scan takes a long, long time (which I'm certain will ultimately error out). Running Drive Genius takes a long, long time as well.
Conclusion:
I think the SATA Controller Cable is defective. I can't think of anything else that would cause disk errors or performance issues like this. Your input is truly appreciated!

Even though no one responded to my post, I thought I'd share the resolution with the entire Apple community. I hope this information will be helpful to some of you with MacBooks or MacBook Pros that may be running painfully slow or may be exhibiting hard drive issues because your machine won't recognize the boot drive or fails to properly boot on a perfectly healthy S.M.A.R.T. verified hard drive. It just might be the hard drive connector/cable. Here it goes...
I visited my local Apple Retail Store and asked a "Genius" at the Genius Bar about this issue and told him my thoughts about a possible failed hard drive connector/cable. First, he didn't even know what a hard drive connector was! Then, he arrogantly stated that he never heard of such a thing and that these cables never fail. Finally, he blatantly dispelled this as a possibility.
On the contrary with my experience, I have had many failed PATA controller cables that required replacement when supporting the desktop PC's at work. I have personally owned and supported many Apple manufactured laptops and desktops and have never encountered this issue on a Mac...until this MacBook!
So, after looking at the Service Manual for the MacBook, I went over to my local Apple Authorized Service Provider and purchased the Hard Drive Connector Apple Part #922-7579. I replaced the original cable, reassembled and proceeded to boot the MacBook with the Leopard DVD installer. The Fujitsu drive was immediately recognized and was able to be formatted and Leopard installed without incident. The MacBook boots off the internal hard drive as normal again and works nice and fast again.
Thank you all for your time!
:D

Severe hard drive failure

My iMac (mid 2007 20 inch/2.4/1+1G/320G) was frozen when I watched movies two days ago. It did not respond to any input anymore, so I forced restarting it (pressing power button for 4 second). I thought it could recover, but only found a folder icon with a question mark flashing on the display. It repeated several times until I finally login the system hours later.
I used disk utility to verify the disk, the system said SMART indicated hard drive was normal functioning. However, after I started some applications, it got frozen again.
I tried to reinstall the system using my Snow Leopard DVD. However, the installer could not change the content of that disk or install the new system. Also, the disk utility in the installer failed to repair the permissions of files on the disk because of i/o error 5 (which simply means the application could not read the file that it wants to access).
According to some articles and threads, error 5 may be caused by bad sections or severe damage to hard drive. In order to test this, I used diskwarrior bootable CD (v4.1) to check the disk. In the report of D/W, it was suggested that the damage to the disk was too severe to recover, so that D/W could not even replace the directory file.
I haven't attempted to erase the disk because I want to use other Macs to access the file on that failed hard drive.
Would anyone suggest something? Your great help is appreciated.

Do a backup of your data as soon as possible and then bring it in for service. To do your backup I would recommend Time Machine and if you have a second external drive create another bootable clone using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
If your machine is covered by AppleCare then contact Apple immediately for repair and replacement of the drive. If it isn't covered then you should prepare to bring it into an Apple certified service center to get the HD replaced. Once it is replaced you can restore the new drive with all settings and data from one of the above backups.
Regards,
Roger

Time machine with 10.5 Server (+thrashing external hard drive)

I run MacOS server to provide support for a small group of collaborators -- mainly via SVN and Wikis, as well as a static website that is publicly accessible, all running off a Mac Mini.
I want to use Time Machine to keep a backup, so I can quickly get up and running if anything goes wrong.
However, when Time Machine is switched on, it seems to spend an inordinate amount of time thrashing the external hard drive (a 1GB in a separate enclosure, connected via Firewire). Looking at top shows du using ~70% of one of the cores on the Mini, and the thrashing lasts for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, even though very little has changed on the server (the wikis get updated at most once a day, and the website gets visit a 10s of times in 24 hours).
Turning off time machine silences du (and the somewhat noisy hard drive)
Any suggestions (or tips for using Time Machine to back up a server in general -- once I get this sorted I plan to test that I can actually recover the server from the backup and install on a new machine)

Turns out that the thrashing was due to Sharepoint; but it was only an issue when time machine was running (so far as I can see). Am still checking that the problem does not come back, but will mark this as solved.

Noisy Hard Drive IS NORMAL!

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