Hard drive running during videos?

A couple of my friends send me videos of them and their kids, and I enjoy watching streaming videos of local high school and college football games. However, I notice my hard drive runs continually when I'm playing them. Is that damaging to my hard drive or is there a way I can download the whole file and play it back without the hard drive running? I'm a newbie to PCs, so maybe the definition of "streaming" is that the drive runs throughout the playback... thanks in advance for any help/suggestions/fixes.

The videos need a place to stream from, in this case your hdd.

This is not an issue ...

Are you sure that it's not your fans that are making the noise? If it's indeed your hard drive making that much noise, then somethings not right.

Hard Drive Running During Videos

It may be my fans... it's pretty loud, though. How could I tell if it's my HD?

billwill said:

It may be my fans... it's pretty loud, though. How could I tell if it's my HD?

Click to expand...

Um, to me a HDD sounds like a bunch of rapid "clicks". If it were a fan, you would hear a continuous "whirring" (is that a word? ) sound.

EDIT: To expand on this, download an iSlayer program, either the iStat Menu or widgets:

http://www.islayer.com/apps/

These will tell you your fan speed. I believe normal for a fan speed on the Macbook is right around 1000rpms. If it's running above that, then you know it's just your fans kicking in to cool the Macbook.

If you're streaming video, it's likely you're using Flash, which is known to be very CPU intensive. This means your CPU is getting hot and needs to be cooled, which is why the fans kick in. Unfortunately, it's just par for the course when watching Flash videos.