If you can get your hands on small enough washers for those screws you could use that instead of the foam. It's trivial to fix once you have the right parts.
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15" clicking noise
- Thread starter murdercitydevil
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If you can get your hands on small enough washers for those screws you could use that instead of the foam. It's trivial to fix once you have the right parts.
Anyone who knows anything about computers would be able to tell you that the noise you are hearing is caused by the "sudden motion sensor". It is an accelerometer that detects sudden or abrupt movement of the laptop and actually parks the read/write head on the hard drive away from the platters to avoid damage if the computer was falling to impact something. It is completely normal and there is nothing wrong with the machine at all. Think of it like the seat belts in your car when you step on the brakes.
Its quite obvious by most peoples suggestions / replies that that have no clue as to what they are talking about.
You must not own a Unibody MBP then. This sound has nothing to do with the SMS and can be duplicated by flipping the computer over and applying light pressure to the bottom case, whether the computer is on or off.
+1
For anyone jumping into the thread, before posting about the sudden motion sensor or the hard drive, please realize that the photos posted by MBHockey above confirm that those are not the cause of the problem and that the sound appears to be coming from a set of loose brackets. This appears to be unique to the new 2010 MBP's that people received in the last two weeks.
Lots of users with SSDs are hearing this same noise. It's clearly not the sudden motion sensor. They do not sound the same at all. As edanuff said, please read the thread 
Mine is an i5 17", but I was also at Bestbuy the other day and the still had 17" C2D on display and it did the exact same thing so I don't think its necessarily specific to the i5/i7 models. It seems to be a unibody design issue/flaw.
Could very well be present in previous unibodies. I'm not sure it's a flaw though. I think it's a safeguard to make sure the tabs click into place easily. Just kind of a poor design.
I know that the 13" unibodies do not have those tabs (probably because the aluminum sheet is smaller so it's less likely to flex in the middle and doesn't need that extra support.) But this is my first 15" unibody, so I wouldn't know.
I upgraded from a late 2008 unibody 15" model which definitely did not have this noise, not sure about any of the minor updates since then.
Hmmm
On second thought...
I took off the back of the case, and yes, I agree - those brackets in the photo are very loose. And it seems they're designed that way. It seems kind of natural that, unless they're locked into place, they'll get more loose over time. On top of that, after trying to tighten them - the brackets are still loose, as I don't think they the screws tightened at all, as there seemed tight to start.
However, I just rebooted with the back plate on - and I don't here the pinging. I'd say the verdict is still out on this one.
On second thought...
I took off the back of the case, and yes, I agree - those brackets in the photo are very loose. And it seems they're designed that way. It seems kind of natural that, unless they're locked into place, they'll get more loose over time. On top of that, after trying to tighten them - the brackets are still loose, as I don't think they the screws tightened at all, as there seemed tight to start.
However, I just rebooted with the back plate on - and I don't here the pinging. I'd say the verdict is still out on this one.
Something tells me it's not the brackets though. I took my MBP apart recently and took those brackets out just to see what was up. Yes, they are lose and can move around, but the things weigh like less than a gram, plus they're very light plastic, the noise (i think) most of us are talking about is for one thing metallic, and for another, sounds heavier. From what I recall it sounded like a small metal bearing falling into a groove. I'm going to assume that it's the sudden motion sensor, but I can't be sure. I can tell you though, that it's one of those two things, there's absolutely nothing else inside that moves around at all, except possibly the microphone under the right speaker may wiggle a bit inside its casing (but i'm pretty sure it's generally wedged completely against the unibody enclosure).
By the way, what are these brackets even for? they don't seem to hold anything in place, and obviously can't provide much support if they move around so freely.
By the way, what are these brackets even for? they don't seem to hold anything in place, and obviously can't provide much support if they move around so freely.
All the symptoms posted here (and in other thread) match the clinking sound I'm experiencing. I'm 100% sure on my end that it's the brackets.
I took the bottom off my MBP last night to test the bracket noise, and by pressing my finger on the brackets and lifting up (letting them fall back to the metal unibody), it made a distinct clinking noise.
With the computer turned off, bottom back on and screws tightened, I pressed against the bottom of the computer in the spot where the bottom half connects to the bracket, then let go, and sort of "jerked" the laptop upward. Doing this (and only this), I can duplicate the sound nearly 100% of the time.
My roommate just bought the same model yesterday, and is experiencing the same issue. It would seem that the brackets are intended to be loose, which would mean it's a design flaw rather than a manufacturing problem.
I took the bottom off my MBP last night to test the bracket noise, and by pressing my finger on the brackets and lifting up (letting them fall back to the metal unibody), it made a distinct clinking noise.
With the computer turned off, bottom back on and screws tightened, I pressed against the bottom of the computer in the spot where the bottom half connects to the bracket, then let go, and sort of "jerked" the laptop upward. Doing this (and only this), I can duplicate the sound nearly 100% of the time.
My roommate just bought the same model yesterday, and is experiencing the same issue. It would seem that the brackets are intended to be loose, which would mean it's a design flaw rather than a manufacturing problem.
I own a 17 inch i7 and there are no noises coming from the chasis ever. Before I bought this I had a 15inch Core 2 Duo from late 2009. Also never made a sound.
I bought my first apple product 2 days ago, the 2010 13" pro, after lots of thought and lurking on here. I've been very impressed, and I guess I can understand why some people never shut up about them.
I use a laptop for work, school, and wasting my own time so it's worth it to have one that's so well designed. And I've found that for the most part it is which is why when I started to hear the clicking my heart sank.
If you're hearing the same clicking that I was, then it is the drive's head parking. Sudden acceleration will trigger this to prevent damage to the disk, as someone posted earlier, but I was hearing it at pretty regular intervals while motionless and idle. This concerned me because drives are only rated for a couple hundred thousand such cycles.
You can use the smartctl program that comes with smartmontools to display the number of times this has happened (as well as other neat stuff like the drive's total age and number of times powered on/off). I had racked up 2000 on the second day, giving my laptop's drive a lifetime of about a year! Uh thanks apple.
It's overzealous power saving. The clicks I got while idle were triggered by a power saving feature built into laptop harddrives: you can set the head to park whenever it can to save power at the expense of lifetime. Apple does some cool stuff but killing drive lifetime to brag about battery life is pretty lame of them.
Anyway, to verify this get smartctl and | grep Load_Cycle_Count to see how many clicks there have been. Wait some time, count how many you hear and check it again. Try to quickly lift the laptop to trigger the accelerometer and you should hear the same sound and see the Load_Cycle_Count incremented appropriately.
Someone made a nice little program called 'hdapm' to adjust this setting, you just have to run it once at boot (it comes with a plist), and it can set the drive for maximum lifetime. It will no longer click when idle (unless you jar it) and I haven't really noticed a penalty on the battery life.
I really don't appreciate this feature, but the control over the system that the unix pedigree lends itself to is great. My eyes bugged out when I saw it comes with emacs and perl.
I use a laptop for work, school, and wasting my own time so it's worth it to have one that's so well designed. And I've found that for the most part it is which is why when I started to hear the clicking my heart sank.
If you're hearing the same clicking that I was, then it is the drive's head parking. Sudden acceleration will trigger this to prevent damage to the disk, as someone posted earlier, but I was hearing it at pretty regular intervals while motionless and idle. This concerned me because drives are only rated for a couple hundred thousand such cycles.
You can use the smartctl program that comes with smartmontools to display the number of times this has happened (as well as other neat stuff like the drive's total age and number of times powered on/off). I had racked up 2000 on the second day, giving my laptop's drive a lifetime of about a year! Uh thanks apple.
It's overzealous power saving. The clicks I got while idle were triggered by a power saving feature built into laptop harddrives: you can set the head to park whenever it can to save power at the expense of lifetime. Apple does some cool stuff but killing drive lifetime to brag about battery life is pretty lame of them.
Anyway, to verify this get smartctl and | grep Load_Cycle_Count to see how many clicks there have been. Wait some time, count how many you hear and check it again. Try to quickly lift the laptop to trigger the accelerometer and you should hear the same sound and see the Load_Cycle_Count incremented appropriately.
Someone made a nice little program called 'hdapm' to adjust this setting, you just have to run it once at boot (it comes with a plist), and it can set the drive for maximum lifetime. It will no longer click when idle (unless you jar it) and I haven't really noticed a penalty on the battery life.
I really don't appreciate this feature, but the control over the system that the unix pedigree lends itself to is great. My eyes bugged out when I saw it comes with emacs and perl.
It can't possibly be the sudden motion sensor. I have an SSD (and also turned off the sudden motion sensor via Terminal) and used to hear it. It might not be the brackets (possibly something else?) but that something else is not the sudden motion sensor.
Yeah. 100% agree.
Today I opened up my MBP again and replaced the foam. I was hearing the bracket noise again and saw that the foam had really lost its "structure". It had flattened out and wasn't useful at all for its purpose.
I had some rubber lying around and used a razor blade to cut it to the right size, it was already a good thickness and conveniently had a 'track' just wide enough for the bracket to fit in it. I screwed the bracket in over the rubber and the noise has once again stopped. I don't expect it to return because the rubber is a lot stronger than the foam was. We'll see how it goes with the rubber.
Check it out:
Edit: After a while now I'm not convinced the sound is coming from these brackets. I think it's something directly under the trackpad. Between the battery and trackpad. I've never taken out the battery (don't have the tri-wing screwdriver) but if someone does and could take a look under the battery that'd be helpful
Has anyone come up with a solution - or even an explanation to this yet?
Seems odd that this is the most recent thread and noone has replied for ten days - this thing is driving me nuts and many people seem to be having this problem...
The clicking noise is the same as everyone else describes. I initially thought it came from the left side, but now I can't really determine if it's from the middle under the trackpad or near the hdd and optical drive. I never hear the sound when using my mbp on a table, but sitting on a couch with the computer placed on my lap I can get as many as ten clicks per minute. As mentioned, I can't determine from where exactly the noise comes, and strangely it seems to vary a bit as well.. I can provoke the noise by moving the computer or just pressing it when it's on my lap (hence the many clicks).
It's a 15" MBP 2010 base model with a mattescreen btw...
Seems odd that this is the most recent thread and noone has replied for ten days - this thing is driving me nuts and many people seem to be having this problem...
The clicking noise is the same as everyone else describes. I initially thought it came from the left side, but now I can't really determine if it's from the middle under the trackpad or near the hdd and optical drive. I never hear the sound when using my mbp on a table, but sitting on a couch with the computer placed on my lap I can get as many as ten clicks per minute. As mentioned, I can't determine from where exactly the noise comes, and strangely it seems to vary a bit as well.. I can provoke the noise by moving the computer or just pressing it when it's on my lap (hence the many clicks).
It's a 15" MBP 2010 base model with a mattescreen btw...
Hi i have the same problem with i5, got its exchanged for a new one and its still making the metallic pin-drop sound even when the machine is off. I went to the apple store yesterday and the genius rep said it was normal which is stupid really,i showed him those pictures above he opened the back casing and tightened some screws of two brackets but thats about it but no joy the noise is still there. Its definitely not the hard drive or optical drive going faulty!.
No solution yet, mine still does it. Maybe someone will find a set of plastic washers that fit under the brackets and offer a repair kit. I'm sure someone in six months will open up a brand new one and find that Apple started doing the same at the factory.
glad this thread got reborn. I took my MBP apart and fixed the plastic brackets moving around. However, the noise that I originally described in my first post is still there, so it IS the sudden motion sensor as I presumed.
How could it be the SMS if the sound is made when the computer is off and people with SSDs hear it? I also no longer think it's the brackets but that doesn't mean it has to be the SMS.