iMac harddrive suddenly making noise

[MacLover2011]

All of a sudden, my iMac hard drive is suddenly making that noise. I have hard it before. It's the kind of noise (I can't explain it), it's almost like a little gurgling sound. At least I think it's the hard drive. I have a 2 TB hard drive and I have 1.4TB left. I got my iMac back in 2011. Can anyone tell me what kind of diagnosis tests to do? And is there a way to consolidate the bite on my hard drive like there is on a PC?
Thanks for your help.
Edit: Oddly enough, when I finished writing this post the sound stopped. LOL

 

[pigoo3]

Could be almost anything. Could be a failing HD…or could be a normal hard drive sound.

You can run Disk Utility and see what it says. If (worst case scenario) the HD is failing. If you don't have a backup…get on it!

And is there a way to consolidate the bite on my hard drive like there is on a PC?

I don't know what this means? What is "consolidate the bite"??

- Nick

 

[MacLover2011]

Could be almost anything. Could be a failing HD…or could be a normal hard drive sound.

You can run Disk Utility and see what it says. If (worst case scenario) the HD is failing. If you don't have a backup…get on it!



I don't know what this means? What is "consolidate the bite"??

- Nick

Okay thanks. Which **** Utility should I use? I can look it up.
By "consolidating bytes" please forgive me for my lack of technical jargon. I guess what I meant, was, to run a hard drive optimizer and make sure they the bytes are reorganized on to one section of the hard drive. My language here might still not be correct.

 

[pigoo3]

Okay thanks. Which **** Utility should I use? I can look it up.
By "consolidating bytes" please forgive me for my lack of technical jargon. I guess what I meant, was, to run a hard drive optimizer and make sure they the bytes are reorganized on to one section of the hard drive. My language here might still not be correct.

"Disk Utility" is on your drive (Applications >> Utilities).

I think that the term you are looking for is a hard drive defragmentation program. These are really not needed that often with Mac OS X…but there is a program called "iDefrag".

- Nick

 

[MacLover2011]

"Disk Utility" is on your drive (Applications >> Utilities).

I think that the term you are looking for is a hard drive defragmentation program. These are really not needed that often with Mac OS X…but there is a program called "iDefrag".

- Nick

Doh!! Yes, defragmentation is EXACTLY the word I was looking for. LOL Why couldn't I remember that word? Thanks man!
So the iMac hard drive is not really needed that much? Interesitng.

 

[techiesteve]

I've had a few of the 27" iMac power supply's making a gurgling noise before, and the noise can be intermittent. I didn't effect performance or fail any diagnostics. They sit just the the left of the hard drive.