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Random clicking noise from superdrive on new MacBook alu

S

spazer

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 27, 2006
83
6
Northern California
I've had my unibody MacBook 2.4ghz for a few days, and I've been hearing a strange clicking noise coming from the superdrive. At first I thought it was the hard drive, it almost sounds like a seeking head, but upon closer inspection, the sound is definitely coming from the optical drive.

This is happening without a disc in the drive, and seems to make the noise every 15-20 seconds. It's not that loud, but loud enough to drive me crazy in a quiet environment.

I have Win XP installed on bootcamp, so I logged into windows to see if the clicking was present in a different OS (to rule out a driver issue in OSX). The issue is exactly the same in windows.

The drive does work, but I'm worried there might be something wrong with it that will cause a premature death.

Does anyone else have this issue? Should I take it back to the Apple Store for an exchange? (Would Apple even allow an exchange like this? I do have the slanted function keys and poor black levels on the LCD as well...)
 
I've been listening closely to the optical drive, and right before it makes the clicking sound, it sounds like the disc rotational motor is spinning up. Almost as if the drive thinks a disc is present and it's trying to spin it up.

Any thoughts or advice? Anyone else have this issue?
 
im seriously thinking about disconnecting my superdrive, i never used the drive in my old white mb, and seeing as it appears to be so easy to do i might just do it,

the whine when you open the lid pi33e2 me off anyway, and even tho its small its still a slight drain on the battery.
 
Same problem, but not as often

I have the same problem, but it doesn't occur at all as often. Usually when I pick the laptop up, it makes the sound or move it around. And we're not talking about a violent movement, delicately picking it up makes the MB make the sound. I have the 2.0 MB, if that makes any difference. Does anyone have any advice? I was thinking about going to a genius bar and asking them... Does anyone think they'll swap in a new one for me. Also, to note, I have the somewhat loose battery/hard drive latch that if you move it, there is space for it to move around. Any thoughts on my issues would be much appreciated. As a first-time owner of a Mac, I'm not sure what I am entitled to and what I should do in my circumstance.
 
I've got the same clicking noise coming from the optical drive. You can only hear it when in a quiet room, but it's slowly driving me insane. Have any of you taken yours to a Genius to see what they say? This is the ONLY complaint I have about mine; no slanted keys, no loose battery cover... But I am also afraid that this noise is just telling of future problems. If any of you take it back to Apple, I'd love to hear what they say.
 
Lurchdubious said:
I've got the same clicking noise coming from the optical drive. You can only hear it when in a quiet room, but it's slowly driving me insane. Have any of you taken yours to a Genius to see what they say? This is the ONLY complaint I have about mine; no slanted keys, no loose battery cover... But I am also afraid that this noise is just telling of future problems. If any of you take it back to Apple, I'd love to hear what they say.
Click to expand...

I did further inspection on this and found that it's actually not the optical drive making the noise. It sounds like the optical drive, since that's where the sound is coming from... but it turns out the sound is coming from there because that's the biggest opening in the aluminum.

I pulled my MB apart and unplugged the optical drive, but the MB back together, and turned it on to listen for the clicking sound. Guess what... the sound was still present. So I swapped back to the 250gb HDD that came with the MB, and whala... the sound is gone. Turns out the clicking sound was my upgraded Western Digital Scorpio Black 320gb 7200rpm hard drive. So I will be exchanging this HDD for another one, and hopefully the sound will be gone. Must be a faulty drive.
 
spazer said:
I did further inspection on this and found that it's actually not the optical drive making the noise. It sounds like the optical drive, since that's where the sound is coming from... but it turns out the sound is coming from there because that's the biggest opening in the aluminum.

I pulled my MB apart and unplugged the optical drive, but the MB back together, and turned it on to listen for the clicking sound. Guess what... the sound was still present. So I swapped back to the 250gb HDD that came with the MB, and whala... the sound is gone. Turns out the clicking sound was my upgraded Western Digital Scorpio Black 320gb 7200rpm hard drive. So I will be exchanging this HDD for another one, and hopefully the sound will be gone. Must be a faulty drive.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. Well, I didn't upgrade my HDD, so I guess I have a faulty one out of the box? Crap.
 
The sound you are hearing is the HD parking it's head. I've had this issue for a long time for my 250GB WD drive.

OS X has aggressive power management and this cause the drive to constantly park it's head. It doesn't happen when you are in Windows (at least for me).

The only solution is either to get a different brand HD or manually set the APM (advanced power management) to 255. This prevent the hd from constantly parking the head.

You can read more about this issue here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1226956&tstart=0
 
spazer said:
I did further inspection on this and found that it's actually not the optical drive making the noise. It sounds like the optical drive, since that's where the sound is coming from... but it turns out the sound is coming from there because that's the biggest opening in the aluminum.

I pulled my MB apart and unplugged the optical drive, but the MB back together, and turned it on to listen for the clicking sound. Guess what... the sound was still present. So I swapped back to the 250gb HDD that came with the MB, and whala... the sound is gone. Turns out the clicking sound was my upgraded Western Digital Scorpio Black 320gb 7200rpm hard drive. So I will be exchanging this HDD for another one, and hopefully the sound will be gone. Must be a faulty drive.
Click to expand...

My 500GB Scorpio is getting this clicking after about 10hrs of use. It doesn't happen when a lot of processes are running, mainly when its idle. it just keeps parking its head, getting annoying!

It is a 5400 RPM model as well. Maybe I should try another brand?
What is the Seagate equivalent?
 
Same issue: Hitachi Dive

Same issue on a late-2008 MBP - 320gb Hitachi (7200rpm) that came with the machine. :(

Guess repeated issue across multiple brands/models of drive makes it a Mac issue - the post cited above is very illuminating - thanks. Wonder why it hasn't been addressed yet?

In any case I'm replacing with a 500gb Samsung (5400rpm) in the next couple of days - I'll report back on whether the issue persists.

ca
 
same problem

i just noticed the same problem in my macbook yesterday. i hear a clicking noise that sounds like it's coming from the hard drive. has this ever developed into a larger problem for anyone?
 
spazer said:
I did further inspection on this and found that it's actually not the optical drive making the noise. It sounds like the optical drive, since that's where the sound is coming from... but it turns out the sound is coming from there because that's the biggest opening in the aluminum.

I pulled my MB apart and unplugged the optical drive, but the MB back together, and turned it on to listen for the clicking sound. Guess what... the sound was still present. So I swapped back to the 250gb HDD that came with the MB, and whala... the sound is gone. Turns out the clicking sound was my upgraded Western Digital Scorpio Black 320gb 7200rpm hard drive. So I will be exchanging this HDD for another one, and hopefully the sound will be gone. Must be a faulty drive.
Click to expand...

is it the 250GB version? the Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02 250GB drive is known for these problem
 
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