IMac :: Excessive Hard Drive Noise Even With No Activity
Nov 16, 2009
I am getting HD noise like every 20 seconds. Even with no activity. Per the suggestions of another user, I typed this in terminal: iostat -w 1 disk0
And the sound seems to coincide with the output whenever the first column has a value other than 0. So it seems there is activity, it's just not user initiated. Is this some kind of energy saving feature that apple is doing or is it a logging application? Is anyone else having the same issues? Even if you're not, could you run the program and check for 1 or 2 minutes (without any other apps open or doing anything) to see if you also get a value other than 0 in the first column every so often and an associated sound?
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May 10, 2009
I usually just turn off my monitor at night but for some reason, the HD constantly makes spinning noise even then the computer hasn't been used for hours ( i don't run time machine ).
Is there any way to tell what process is causing this stupid HD activity? My previous Dell machine was so much more quiet than this POS. I prefer not having to explicitly put the machine the sleep every time.
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May 25, 2010
I've owned my iMac for a little over a year and I started having a weird buzzing noise coming from a hard drive fan. Downloaded iStat, everything runs at idle speeds (hard drive fan at 1200rpm), so the speed is not an issue. Sounds like a mechanical problem. Also downloaded FanControl, and once I increase the fan's speed to 2500rpm, the buzzing noise goes away, but now I can hear the fan It kind of defeats the purpose of having the expensive computer, that used to be virtually silent. I am in remote location in Alaska, where we don't have Apple store and the only way to fix is to ship it to mainland. Apple warranty is over, but I still get additional 1 year of coverage from Amex credit card, but I would much rather prefer to to fix it myself. Any suggestions on possibly replacing the fan myself? I am really debating whether I should ship it to Apple and trying to go through American Express with warranty. That would be complicated and I would end up without a computer for a few weeks.
Late 2008 iMac 24'. 3.06 GHz, 2GB RAM, 500GB Hard Drive, NVidia GeForce 8800GS.
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Aug 20, 2010
I bought an iMac in 2009 from the Apple Store (core 2 duo). Ever since the first time I turned it on, I have been hearing a rattling noise from what seems to be the hard drive. It is a constant rattling sound, and you can really hear it when you click something or open something. It is only noticeable when the room is dead silent - when the air conditioner is on, I can't hear it.
Is this normal? Should I have it replaced/looked at? Should I upgrade to a Solid State Drive for a quieter experience? The model of my hard drive is: ST31000528ASQ
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Aug 14, 2010
My drives for all 3 imacs i have gone through so far were dead silent until I Partitioned them, then they made the classic stomach growl noises. I was just wondering if others with the noise problem had a partition or not, ause it seems making a partition should not effect the noise. Say I am crazy cause to me it sounds crazy but I swear the first two imacs were fine till I partitioned them. I am now afraid to partition this new one I have cause its quiet and I do not want to go back to the store again! Anyway others who have had this issue did you have a partition?
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Jun 29, 2012
Usually when engaged in multi-party iChat, the fan comes on and makes the audio spotty and/or just causes disruptive background noise. What can I do to stop it?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Oct 25, 2008
I just got my macbook pro yesterday and ran it all yesterday not hearing anything. Today when I woke it from sleep I could clearly hear the fan or hard drive going. I was in a quiet room and it's quite annoying.
istat says its at 2000 rpm so thats when I started thinking it may be the hard disk. It does pulse every now and then but thats even while it's just sitting idle.
I guess I could live with it but its just annoying. Anyone else having this?
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Mar 8, 2008
I tried search and did not find anything. So, is there an application we can run that would show hard drive activity?
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Oct 9, 2009
I have a new 17" MBP and recently it stopped going to sleep on its own. I can force it to sleep my apple menu or shutting the lid. I have tried everything I can think of... all programs closed, nothing running (to my knowledge) and in activity monitor it shows the disk activity writting every 20 seconds or so... my only conclusion is that it's not letting the HD become inactive long enough to send to sleep... can someone please help me with this?
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Nov 22, 2009
I noticed lately that my Macbook Pro (late 2008) can get pretty slow because of hard drive activity. Strange this is, there seems to be quite a lot of activity from time to time even when I'm doing next to nothing (but surfing and mailing). how I can diagnose/fix this? Or do I need more memory (got 2gb).
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Mar 26, 2012
It's a 27 inch iMac, 10.6.8, 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3GB 1067 MHz DDR3, late 2009. Recently (last couple of months) I've noticed it seems to be 'constantly' making the write/rewrite noise and is busy doing something. When this happens, activity is slightly stalled, slowed, paused while it finishes whatever it's doing. I check the Activity Monitor expecting to see high CPU but there is nothing especially hogging CPU. But on the advice of another person answering someone else's similar complaint, checked Disk Activity, which does show sharp peaks. I have cloned the hard drive and cloned it back and the problem persists.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.7), Loads of iMacs/PowerBooks, MBPs/iPods and iPhones
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Jan 12, 2011
Been having a problem with my MBP recently, it's the 2008 model btw. This happens like 3 or 4 times a day it usually starts with me trying to change spaces and nothing happening, and the dock won't pop up when I mouse over the bottom. After doing this for say 30 seconds or so the active app will freeze too. I'll still be able to move my mouse it becomes unresponsive. iStat menus tells me that the hard drive is reading and writing at like 5 or 6 Mbps, and the the dock is taking up 200 or Mbs of memory. all the while nothing is happening. after a minute or two it come back slowly like I'll be able to scroll very jumpily for a bit and then the dock'll pop up and I'll whizz round the spaces I keyed in etc.
This is starting to get really annoying, I've tried resetting PRAM and the SMC thing (or whatever they are, the things you do when you turn the laptop off) and repaired the permissions etc. The only thing I can think of doing is a complete reinstall, but that takes a fair amount of effort so I was wondering if you guys had any ideas what's going on. On a separate note my laptop also does this weird sleep thing when I close the lid, it goes to sleep, then comes on again and there's HD activity and then goes to sleep again and so on and so on. This is pretty irritating because the laptop's roasting hot if you leave it like this for a while and it drains the battery. Meaning I've got to shut it down completely if I want to put it in a bag to go somewhere.
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Jan 7, 2010
My friend gave me his old Apple cube G4 + 15" Cinema display in like 1000 pieces. Its completely teared apart. I tried a lot, but it doesn't work. The original IDE cable wasn't included, so I bought one for 2 cents. It should work or not? Maybe the powersupply. I'm not sure. I don't believe actually that the hardware itself, like the motherboard is broken. When everything is into place and I connect the cube to the powersupply it boots immediately. I don't have to do anything. Harddrive spins and the superdrive makes some noise as well. This repeats itself every 5 seconds. The screen is connected and gets power through DVI, but no display. Both the cube and display have touch enabled buttons to switch it on, but they do not respond (I guess).. Motherboard gives 2 light. DS1 is green, DS2 is red.
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Sep 1, 2006
I received my nice new Mac Pro yesterday. 2.66GHz With one 160gb drive and one 500gb drive and some other customisations which, for the purpose of this are not relivent.
My first and most serious problem is a rhythmic clicking, which according to technical support is a known issue and is to do with my hard disk drive. The noise comes from the top front side of the machine and clicks at around 200bpm at all times. It is very audible and unnexceptable and for this reason Apple are replacing my machine.
The second problem which I believe to be more of a design flaw is noisy fans. I obviously know fans make noise but this is an intermitent buzz, at a constant frequency. It sounds like a bee is flying about in my machine and varies according to the angle of the machine and wheither the superdrive bay is open.
As you will understand I am very dissatisfied. My machine took 3 weeks to arrive and is riddled with problems.
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Nov 3, 2007
I just bought a 500gig WD Caviar SATA hard drive for my Mac Pro. When it is being written to it creates noise in my speakers. I've had this problem with external hard drives before (Seagate) and thought I'd be avoiding this by going with an internal drive.
Could I have installed it incorrectly? Is there anything I can do, or should return it and see if I have better luck with a new one?
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Jun 7, 2010
Bought this $2K baby on the first day of BTS promo on May 25th, so Tue is my last day for return period.
I just noticed this noise from my right side of computer. I think it's my hard drive noise. Came out when running a slightly heavy program such as VMWare Fusion. You guys see this as a reason to get this exchange???
I recorded this noise using my blackberry bold 9700.
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Aug 30, 2010
I just bought a brand new MacBook Pro about 2 weeks ago. I'd say about a week ago I notice a clicking noise when I pick up the macbook or move it at all coming from the hard drive.
I finally took to the internet to find out what was going on, and got mixed results. Some said that it was normal for a Macbook Pro and that it was securing the hard drive so it didn't break while I moved it, and a vast majority said that the hard drive's failure was imminent. So what is it?
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Sep 14, 2010
its a 500gb @ 7200rpm just installed it and runs great some ppl complained of vibration and noise from the HD but i have NONE of those complains its super fast and quiet the installation was very easy and after installation i put in the SL dvd and restored from previous backup on my time machine, and it was like i never switched HDs.
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Jan 16, 2010
I bought a 13" macbook pro only weeks ago and since the day I bought it I noticed any sudden movement causes a "clicking" noise from the hard drive. At first I assumed that apple have included some sort of safety anti shock casing built around the hard drive in case of acidentally dropping the macbook.
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Apr 14, 2010
For lucky 15" i5/i7 owners: how silent are they? Does the fan come on at all? If so, after how much load? Any other noises? Hard drive?
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Oct 31, 2009
I have a Powerbook G4 with Mac OS X 10.4.11
Its about 4-5 years old now.
Recently the hard drive or fan (I think) has started to get louder. The noise is coming from the top left hand side of powerbook. Every so often it makes a loud churning sound for a bit, then it will slow down and stop.
1. Is this the hard drive or fan?
2. Can this be fixed?
3. Is this the end of my Powerbook?
4. What should I do?
Hardware Overview:
Machine Name:PowerBook G4 15"
Machine Model:PowerBook5,8
CPU Type:PowerPC G4 (1.5)
Number Of CPUs:1
CPU Speed:1.67 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU):512 KB
Memory:2 GB
Bus Speed:167 MHz
Boot ROM Version:4.9.6f0
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Jun 22, 2012
when occurs a suspension of hard drive activity, manually or after a period of inactivity, this suspension seems to be incomplete (a ventilator continue to run) therefore my mac (power-mac G5, OS 10.4.11) is unable to restart, no possible action from the keyboard (I must shut down and restart)
Info:
PowerMac G5, Mac OS X (10.4.4), & PowerBook (10.3.9)
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Nov 7, 2007
I've recently been getting a clicking noise from my hard drive, and when it happens 90% of the time my mac crashes for about 10 seconds. First thing I did was verify my disk in disk utility and I got a response I'm not entirely clear of the meaning so I've attached a screenshot of what my response is. I'm going to try some other 3rd party app to see whats up with my hard drive such as techtool pro...I'm on a 2.33 ghz 15" macbook pro with leopard.
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Jun 11, 2008
I just bought a Mac Pro. I immediately installed 2 GB of RAM and four large hard drives without even booting the computer while it was stock. Anyway, the machine is connected to JBL Creature speakers via the (analog) line-out port. However, unless I also have the headphone port connected to the speakers with a splitter, I get a really high pitched squeeling regardless of volume level. And yes, my sound preferences are set to the analog line-out setting.
Also, when I have both ports connected to the speakers and the squeeling is gone, I get hard drive read and write noise through the speakers. It's most apparent in Final Cut Pro and Motion. I'm hoping that, if it needs to be repaired, Apple will go through my local Apple-certified shop (not an actual Apple Store) instead of having to send it in.
Mac Pro 2.8 GHz Quad
Mac OS X (10.5.3)
4 GB RAM
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Aug 16, 2009
Got a new MBP 17" 500GB 7200rpm about 2 months ago. Recently It's starting to make this weird clicking and beeping noise more and more. It used to do it every once in a while and I didn't think too much of it, but recently it's started doing it more, quite a bit actually. Is this something I need to be worried about? I'm thinking it is the Hard Drive, is that true? if so, then what? I am also getting the spinning beach ball a lot more often, for a good minute at a time. I am currently on the latest build of SL, the one right before release.
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Jan 2, 2010
Background Info: Earlier today, I experienced a what I am 99.9% sure was a hard drive crash on my white MacBook (about 36 months old). Everything stopped responding, and I heard a clicking noise coming from where the the hard drive is located. I forced a shutdown by holding down the power button, and tried to reboot, only to be greeted by the little question mark folder and the clicking sound. Fortunately, I had just backed it up the previous night, so I knew I hadn't lost anything of value. Then, about an hour ago, a made another attempted to start it up again, and to my surprise, was greeted by no clicking and an logo.
Actual Questions:
I am guessing this is not a one time occurrence, and that the noise and another crash will be back, am I correct? If so, does anyone have any guess on how long until it does return, and ultimately, how long can I put off my trip to the genius bar?
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May 23, 2012
I posted a YouTube video so you could hear the noise my MacBook Pro 15 inch laptop is making. Here is the link as well as the copy/pasted description I used on YouTube (too lazy to re-write) url...Two weeks ago my MacBook Pro started getting really hot on the back left hand side of the keyboard area -- to the point that I couldn't have it resting on my legs.It is now making a crunching noise from the same area. Sometimes it doesn't crouch and other times it's so loud it sounds like an expiring bomb. It doesn't have to do with how many programs I'm using. I just watched a full movie and it was silent on the crunch noise ... Other times nothing is running and it's just sitting there crunching away. Not sure if this is a fan or hard drive issue -- I've YouTubed other videos but my noise seems to be completely different from everything I've found.Heading into Apple tomorrow but I'm worried it'll stop making the noise when I go in, like the car whose breaks squeak until you take it to the mechanic type of thing.
Info:
MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.6.6)
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Apr 22, 2007
I have an iBook G3 700 Combo Drive 648 megs of RAM and a 20 GB hard drive. Every now and then specifically when I'm running high processor tasks, the hard drive makes this wierd noise, which is a sequence that repeats over and over again. I can't tell if it is writing to the disk or reading from the disk. It makes 3 short noises, and then a long noise:
(short - short - short - long)
Try to imaging that noise. It is just the sound of the hard drive working. This will repeat itself over and over. Sometimes If I have lots of tabs open at once in safari and i open them at the same time that will happened. But after like a minute it will stop. But other times it will keep repeating that noise over and over for ever so I have to manually restart the computer forcefully. (Holding down the power button). The computer also freezes and I get that spinning color wheel.
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Sep 15, 2008
every once and a while, when I am working on my MBA, i get a loud "ticking noise" in the upper right of my keyboard.It sounds like the harddrive is trying to think or something, but it only happens for about 5 seconds and it occurs even at idle if i dont do anything that requires the computer to use memory or access the cache, etc...
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Mar 8, 2010
I've got a serious issue that needs to be solved, one way or another. I have a Seagate FreeAgent 1.5 TB External Hard Drive with two partitions on it: one for Time Machine, and one for extra storage. Yesterday, I tried to plug the drive in and nothing happened. It didn't light up; it wasn't recognized by my Mac. Just a strange buzzing noise that occurs every 2-3 seconds. So, I left it alone overnight. Woke up this morning, plugged it in, and same results.
I'm extremely upset and concerned over this. Losing this data is not an option, as there are more than just backups on this. It should be noted that the day before this started, it took a short tumble off my desk, and when trying to eject it yesterday, the drives would not eject so I had to pull it out. Please, if you know of any way to get it working again or to salvage the data on this thing, please help. I've attached an audio clip of what the drive sounds like when plugged in.
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