Clicking noises on MacPro

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Hi List
I am hearing a lot of ticking or clicking noises on both hard drives installed on a MacPro. These occur when the HD is performing simple tasks such as clicking on icons, scrolling through windows and is quite noticeable when opening applications etc. I don't know if I'm a little over-concerned with this or not but I was told by Apple online support that the drive should be completely quiet if it is not under pressure or full. The speed of the HD doesn't seem to be adversely affected but I've been told that the ticking is not a healthy sign. I've taken it to the service dept. of the retailer from which I purchased it but they think it's fine. Any advice?
 

cwa107


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Hi List
I am hearing a lot of ticking or clicking noises on both hard drives installed on a MacPro. These occur when the HD is performing simple tasks such as clicking on icons, scrolling through windows and is quite noticeable when opening applications etc. I don't know if I'm a little over-concerned with this or not but I was told by Apple online support that the drive should be completely quiet if it is not under pressure or full. The speed of the HD doesn't seem to be adversely affected but I've been told that the ticking is not a healthy sign. I've taken it to the service dept. of the retailer from which I purchased it but they think it's fine. Any advice?

As drives age they will become noisier, no doubt. This is quite common. If you are hearing loud "clunking" noises, accompanied by odd or problematic system behavior, then you have a mechanical failure. Otherwise, I would just maintain good backups and not worry about it.

You do use a regular backup strategy, right?
 
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I would tend to be a little worried about this. However, it all comes down to the kind of noise. The best description I have heard of many of today's drives when the heads are in active motion is "rattling". Normally you can't hear the drive at all. When you retrieve files, open programs or do anything else that causes the drive to be accessed, you can usually hear it, and this "rattling" description seems apt.

HOWEVER, a "clicking" noise in particular is usually the sign of a sick and/or dying drive. If it is really CLICKING, I would take it back. At a bare minimum, as cwa suggests, keep very close backups. This drive could be on its last legs.

Since this is a fairly new machine, I wonder if this is a case of hard drive "infant mortality". My personal experience, if a hard drive is going to fail, it usually occurs in the first three months of active life. If you get past that milestone, the drive is USUALLY good for a long and healthy life (there are exceptions of course, but this is the general rule).
 
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Slow Mac Pro & Ticking/Grinding

I'm getting what sounds like, well... almost a grinding/ticking noise from my Mac Pro, not too dissimilar to ol' Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet! All of my apps seem real slow, from staring up, some almost taking 30 sec's to a minute, to refresh rates and slow downs being a common occurrence, in fact it's a pain in the a**e and rather worrying. If I ever see a spinning beach ball again I'll, I'll.....

Any Ideas people, I must confess, though i've worked on a Mac for 3 years now I still don't know much about the hardware and general 'under the bonnet/hood' stuff
 
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Why start a new thread when you took time to post in the same subject thread right before creating your own thread? This is a cross-post actually because those two posts are identical...

*Merged threads*

*Deleted one of the duplicate posts*
 
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Very Sorry, new to forums. Worried that because of the older thread not being viewed.
 
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Pop in your optical drive the restore disk that came with your Mac and restart holding down the D key. This is the Apple Intel-based Macs How to. In your case, ask for the "extended testing". This will check the health of all the hardware components in your Mac Pro.

Now I'm thinking you'll want to check your internal hard drive. Restart, holding down the C key this time, just like if you were going to reinstall. Once you are fully booted, instead of asking for a reinstall and choosing options in the installer window, look in the menubar, there should be an item there for Disk Utility or something similar. Once you have located and launched Disk Utility, choose your hard drive icon in the left hand sidebar and click on verify disk and repair the disk if necessary.

Clicking sounds can sometimes mean the hard drive is about to fail. Which is odd because of you have a Mac Pro, it isn't all that old. But then again, hard drives do fail on new machines. It's not common but it does happen.

If nothing in the tests give you any idea of what is going on, take it in to get it checked in case it really is failing hard drive and try to make a backup as soon as possible just to be safe.
 
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Thanks MacHeadCase. I will try your suggestions.

Once again, Thanks.

Al T
 
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Help! I tried re-booting holding down 'C', now nothing appears on my monitors, it seems my mac is starting up, I get the Startup 'Sounds', but nothing appears, I've tried holding the power button to turn Mac off, which it does, powered up again and still nothing on monitors.

Somebody please..... HELP!!!
 
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Hold down the Option key at startup then.

You do have your restore disk in your optical drive, yes?
 
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Disc is in there. Option key? Apple Key?

Thanks for the swift reply.
 
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Option, not Command (or Apple) key. It's the one right to the left of the Command key. On certain keyboards, it kinda looks like a weird stairs or something.
 
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Yeah, Sorry, that button! Anyway it didn't do anything. I looked in the user guide and followed there option- Hold down Option, Command and P and R keys at sturt up, the startup 'music sounded twice, I let go the keys and still nothing. My monitors are just not getting anything fom the Mac.

Thanks again for your help MHC, it's really appreciated.

Al
 
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Is your system a casualty of a Leopard install? Or are you running OS X Tiger 10.4.x?

The thing is that it sounds to me like you should get on the phone with Apple Care if you're still covered. If not, take it back and get it checked. This does sound serious but I hope for you it isn't. I really don't know at this point what I can suggest to you.

Maybe someone else has a better idea.
 
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Thanks again MacHeadCase. To add to the mystery, I route to my PS3 from my Mac Pro, I can see and play all relevant content on my PS3 from my Mac when it's on, but my monitors show no signal!
 
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Sounds like the noises were a warning of an impending disk failure, which has unfortunately now happened. Service call time, I'm afraid.
 
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All is well. I just unplugged the monitors, the HDD and re-inserted and all was well. Gonna do a re-install to freahen things up. Thanks, once again for your help and advice.

Al T
 
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Al, I don't think software gone bad would make a clicking sound.

So use an external hard drive and back up regularly, even daily for heaven's sake: you might have a very nasty surprise one day that no matter how many times you try to reinstall, the installer will not find a hard drive to install itself on and you'll lose all your data... And there won't be a single thing you can do about it because it'll be too late.
 
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MacHeadCase - by "option" do you mean "Alt"?


Alex
 

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