HDD occasionally makes a very light 'click' noise

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Okay so I'm new to Mac and yesterday I picked up my shiny new Macbook Pro 15" and its pretty darn sweet. I have the 2.66 ghz model with dual graphics cards and its a beautiful machine! I certainly will not be going back to Windows any time soon.

Anyway, there is something I'm kinda worried about. The HDD occasionally makes a very light 'click' noise, its not the same sort of click that a usual HDD makes so I'm assuming that it doesn't mean failure of any sort, well at least I hope so. The 'click' only occurs occasionally and is very low, also there have been no instances of freezing, lagging or crashing. It actually sounds more like a click then a tap.

I've checked out online and it says on the Apple website that this may be the motion sensor or the pin parking its head or something along those lines, but I'd like some clarification from real users with experience.

Can someone please help me out and let me know if there is anything wrong, I have a 320GB HDD if that helps. I also have an audio clip of it and I can post it if someone can tell me how.

Thanks guys.
 
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I have a similar noise on my Aluminum 13-Inch MacBook. It is kind of a faint clicking noise. It doesnt bother me, and I need to concentrate to really hear it.

I think it could be related to the sudden motion sensor as you have described, or the drive might go into occasional powersaving mode. I havent had any problems with it at least ...

However if you are worried you could get an cheap external USB drive. Connect it to your Mac and backup your drive using time machine for example. Just to be on the safe side. Hard drives can fail.
 

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What you have found on Apple's site is correct, some drives will make a light clicking noise on occasion. And, they're more easily heard on a notebook where the drive is typically sitting 2-3 ft from you than they are on a desktop machine.

If you have any data that would cause a moment's grief if the drive were to fail, I would suggest following Strukt's advice about setting up an external for back up.
 
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I think it is in fact the Sudden Motion Sensor - there is a simply way to check this, just shake the computer a little and see if it's the same sound :) maybe run something to spin the drive b4 shaking, like a movie or copying
 
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As a safeguard install a SMART status utility which will tell you the state of your drive. SMARTRepoprter v. 2.3.9 is one which puts a HD icon in the menu bar, green for good and alerts otherwiswe.

corecode->SMARTReporter
 
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Hearing the slight 'click' here as well.

Glad to see I am not alone, wonder if this is by design? Got a new MacBook Pro earlier this week and I too am hearing the slight click from the laptop. Don't know if it is the HD or a fan or something turning on.

Coming from a PC background as well -- still getting used to the new hardware.
 
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Hey guys I'm back, so I installed that Smart HDD thing and it says that everything is fine so I guess its just normal.
 

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Hey guys I'm back, so I installed that Smart HDD thing and it says that everything is fine so I guess its just normal.

I would not stand for that at all. If I get a new machine I expect it to be flawless.
 
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I would not stand for that at all. If I get a new machine I expect it to be flawless.

Flawless? As far as I know this is just the motion sensor making the normal noise. I ran all the checks and it says everything is fine. You're making me paranoid now.... :|
 

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Flawless? As far as I know this is just the motion sensor making the normal noise. I ran all the checks and it says everything is fine. You're making me paranoid now.... :|

My motion sensor doesn't make that noise. Do you know what HDD you have? I leave my MB on overnight and if there was any noise I wouldn't be able to sleep at all. >_>"
 
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My motion sensor doesn't make that noise. Do you know what HDD you have? I leave my MB on overnight and if there was any noise I wouldn't be able to sleep at all. >_>"

Its the 320GB one, it doesn't make the noise a lot. I can only hear it when it is dead silent and I read that it may not be the motion sensor. The noise literally only occurs when the laptop is sitting idle with literally no applications running. It is only really audible when I am just surfing the net. According to Apple, this is because when there is no activity the HDD parks its head to prevent damage, so maybe you aren't hearing it because you are running applications over night that require use of the hard drive.

I definitely would have it checked out if it was causing me problems, but the laptop is working perfectly and all the checks say that everything is fine. Besides, its normal for laptops to make a little noise right, I mean this is nothing compared to my HP laptop HDD noise.
 
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Brand?

Promethius, what brand of drive do you have? I am seeing this with the Fujitsu 160GB model.
 
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I'm so relieved having come by this thread. I too have a MacBook Pro (13") and hear an occasional soft click from the drive. I do not notice any lag in performance, but wanted to be sure - (that's when I came by this thread).

What scared me about this noise is that my 15" MacBook Titanium just died - (hence the need for this computer). Not that it had a similar noise, but the hard drive was on its way out and it was making hard disc noises that started quiet and then became so bad that I knew the end was near. I do still need to replace that hard drive, but I quickly backed up my files (not all) to an external drive and ran out to get this computer.

Thanks again.
 
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Its a Hitachi drive, the model number is HTS545032B9SA02

I get the slight noise with a Hitachi 320gb, 7200 rpm. I checked the drive last night and it's all fine. Had it for a month now. The sound for me is not quite as discernible for me as it was prior to resetting the PRAM. I don't know if that is something of a factor or not.
 
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Okay so I'm new to Mac and yesterday I picked up my shiny new Macbook Pro 15" and its pretty darn sweet. I have the 2.66 ghz model with dual graphics cards and its a beautiful machine! I certainly will not be going back to Windows any time soon.

Anyway, there is something I'm kinda worried about. The HDD occasionally makes a very light 'click' noise, its not the same sort of click that a usual HDD makes so I'm assuming that it doesn't mean failure of any sort, well at least I hope so. The 'click' only occurs occasionally and is very low, also there have been no instances of freezing, lagging or crashing. It actually sounds more like a click then a tap.

I've checked out online and it says on the Apple website that this may be the motion sensor or the pin parking its head or something along those lines, but I'd like some clarification from real users with experience.

Can someone please help me out and let me know if there is anything wrong, I have a 320GB HDD if that helps. I also have an audio clip of it and I can post it if someone can tell me how.

Thanks guys.

I have exactly the same machine that you do Promethius, and I can assure you, mine doesn't make any noise of such kind.

I don't know what course of action you should take, and cannot advize you on it either, but just categorize all these posts and draw a conclusion according to them.

I believe each machine has its own way about it, and it may mean nothing.

good luck, it's a bang-up machine:)
 
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if it is the HD, back up your stuff immediately and bring it in if its still underwarrenty. say your HD is clicking every so often and it is going to fail
 

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