HDD Clicking?

I don't know if I should be worried or not about the clicking my HDD is making. Never recall it doing it this much before but it's doing it quite often lately. Anyone know wot could be causing it?

Thanks.

Possibly your fan is tapping a loose part in which case you might want to carefully take of the outer casing and check. If you don't feel comfortible in doing so i would consider taking it to a computer store and have them check it out cause it is possible that in time it could do harm to your MAC™.





P.S. as always this is just a suggestion and I am not
responsible for any damage to your MAC™. Good luck

does it sound like the tap described above, or a real fast repeating but still varying click?
if its the secondone, it may be a sign your drive is going bad, Id suggest backing everything up daily just in case, cause one day, if you restart or start up your mac, it may not start up.

The click might be because your hard drive is being used a lot - and it's also caused sometimes by the lack of enough ram while running programs. When there is less ram, the hard drive does more work in order to perform properly. When there is enough ram, the RAM is used more isntead of the hard drive. How much ram do you have? Maybe you need to upgrade. Or yea, it could also be the fan...

It's not very consistant so I don't think it's the fan hitting anything.

Very true Lasha, I have the minimum 256 built in. I'm planning on maxing it out w/ another gig stick soon. Could be heavy swap space usage, at least that's wot I hope.

Usually a clicking hard drive means it is about to die, I would backup any critial files just incase. Reading a hard drive for virtual memory purposes shouldn't make it click even if you do it a lot.

Well, hard drive clicking is normal. My hard drive clicks, my brother's old computer's hard drive clicks - it's just a sign that your hard drive is reading and processing day. So, you're gonna max out with a total of 1.25GB of RAM, eh? NICE! Should be a **** of an upgrade!

Yup, ordered the stick last night so I should get it sometime this week. I really hope it's not the HDD failing, I mean I just got this thing about 2 months ago!

Oh, and it only really does it when I have multiple apps running. Keeping my fingers crossed guys!

Okay, got the UPS tracking # for the gig stick and backed up all my important data. I'm ready to go when the stick gets here. Hopefully it is just a lot of swap space usage.

I had similar problems two weeks ago with my 12" iBook 9Oct 2004) I got my HDD replaced by Apple Store. So please visit an Apple store. This new iBook lot has got defective HDDs. There are several such cases , Apples own discussion forum for Ibook is full of such posts in last 3 weeks or so.

suhasG said:

I had similar problems two weeks ago with my 12" iBook 9Oct 2004) I got my HDD replaced by Apple Store. So please visit an Apple store. This new iBook lot has got defective HDDs. There are several such cases , Apples own discussion forum for Ibook is full of such posts in last 3 weeks or so.

Click to expand...

Did you lose all your data in the replacement, or were they able to copy it over to the new drive? I haven't been hearing any clicking all day today- I've been keeping of running multiple apps at the same time, but this is still a concern of mine.

Desolate One - How far do you live from an Apple Store? Couldn't harm just to have them check it out...

where did you originally buy your iBook from? Did you purchase it directly from the Apple Retail Store or online?

I read about 4 people who have ordered their iBooks from Amazon have had minor problems and glitches. A guy I know who ordered his 12" iBook from Amazon had a glitch with his HDD not being able to "see itself" and he did mention the click of death. He brought it to a Genius and they had to use the "red phone". They replaced his 30GB HDD with a different 30GB HDD (i think he said it was a different brand from the original). If I get a chance I'll try to ask him to be more specific or tell him to join this forum and explain.

-I live about a 30 second drive/3 minute walk from one.
-Directly from an Apple retail store.

I'll definitely have them check it out soon, but I've been busy entertaining out of town guests this holiday season.

As far as a replacement drive, will they be able to mirror my setup, or will I have to start from scratch w/ a clean install?

Also, it hasn't been making the clicking noise anymore... So if I take it in and can't duplicate the issue/noise how will they diagnose the problem?

Well just brought her back from the Apple store and they said everything was just fine. Pretty much some heavy swap usage due to the little RAM I have. I should be getting my gig stick in the post tomorrow so we'll see how it pans out then.

They did recommend I check the S.M.A.R.T. Status of the drive via Disk Utility and of course back up my data, more often if I feel I'm having a problem.

I would take that clicking noise as a warning the disk maybe going to fail. You need to make a back up of all of your data before the disk fails. If you have an external disk drive you can use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a copy of your system.

To be on the safe side I backed up all my important files, but does Carbon Copy Cloner create an identical image of the disk? If so I may be getting another HDD just for that purpose seeing as this would be the easiest way to get my system back after a HDD failure.

I'll see how the system runs w/ 1.25GB of RAM. I should be getting it tonight.

Okay, just another thought here. The Apple tech @ the Genius Bar asked me wot my definition of "clicking" is so I have another question for you fine Mac users here @ the forums!

The night I took note of the sound was whilst running multiple apps, mostly minimized, and surfing a bit on Safari. iTunes was running (minimized) but not playing- thus quiet enough for me to hear it. It basically just sounded like swap space being accessed just by reading the news online, not a click or scroll of the page by the user (me). Granted I wasn't doing anything but since I had multiple apps running at once I'm hoping that's all it was.

So wot do you guys think?

Perhaps I'll try to record the sounds and post the .wav for you guys to listen to.

I would define clicking as any sound from the disk drive that is not normal. I assume you know what it sound like when you normally access the disk (disk chatter).

I had a disk that just ticked, every few seconds. Then my disk failed.