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Attempted restart, Mac Pro makes ticking sound

L

ljones

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 2, 2006
232
0
Atlanta, GA
So my mac was acting up, no sound from iChat and Spaces wouldn't function properly.


So i restart, the Mac pro gets o the normal point of turning off the display before the spin up sound, but instead this ticking sound occurred. This had a repetition at about ever 3 seconds.

So i quickly held the power button and shut down the Mac pro. I powered up the system and all seemed fine.

Has anyone ever ran across this before?

Looking at iStat, my hard drives are 40 celsius, one is 46. Thats 104 and 115 Fahrenheit.

My fans are running normally.
 
A ticking sound is, in my experience, always coming from the hard drive. I would do a back-up of your important files, if I were you.

--Erwin
 
Yes, agree, hard drive problem. I have had that twice before, once a few years ago on a Dell, then 2 months ago on my MBP. Backup frequently from now on (daily, SuperDuper, bootable copy) and be prepared for it to die without notice. Strangely enough the service centre was able to get mine working again (and avoid a replacement) but I swopped it out for a bigger HDD anyway cause that ticking sound is like a bomb waiting to go off.....
 
This sound did not sound like it was coming from a had drive. I have 3 in there, but if it was, damn, no way of knowing which.
The sound was more that click sound you hear when you restart or boot up. Some switch or something turning things on.


I did get stuck on a gray screen a few weeks ago. Everything is backed up to my 1TB time capsule. Critical stuff will be on DVDs.
 
when my drive died, i was getting same ticking sound and it was barely audible because of case. it was also stuck at the grey screen and wouldn't boot until i took out the bad drive
 
That narrows it down to the system drive. Luckily the only thing on that drive is the system. All my other files live on the other drives.
 
It happened so fast, definitely didn't sound like a good sound. The sound definitely had that switch toggle sound to it, similar to that of a restarting Mac Pro.

Compared to any hard drive sound, I would take a bombing hard drive sound over what i heard. So i'll be keeping a look out, and place the machine to sleep when I'm not home. Although thats what i normally do.
 
O, apparently this happens whenever I try to restart. Only way to get the computer to actually restart is to hold the power button until the mac goes completely off, then pressing the power button to start it up.

This sound definitely sounds as if it's coming from a hard drive. Everything on the system works fine until i need to restart.

i guess I could drag this damn thing to the Apple Store. no Apple Care, so... yea, out of pocket.

Did a bit of research, and finally ran across info on bad ram causing this problem. And o my surprise, two of my 1gb dimms were not showing up. These were the first two purchased when i bought my mac pro. So now I'm down to 5gb.
 
It's usually the hard drive- but it can sometimes be the RAM.

I know I had the problem when I installed a new 500GB HD into my Mac Pro. I removed the [incl.] 250GB HD from Bay 1, moved it to Bay 2, and installed the new 500GB into Bay 1. So I keep OS X Leopard on my 500GB drive, and Windows can have the little 250GB (because it's not good enough for a large hard disk) :p. When I booted it up, it clicked for a while- so I powered her down, installed Leopard fresh, and tried again. No problems ever since.

So anyway, try removing, and repositioning the the memory sticks, as well as the riser cards. It could be a loose connection? Also try removing, and repositioning the hard disks. I would also suggest backing up your important/personal files and just totally reformatting. It doesn't appear to be a drive failure at this stage. :)
 
The click sound went away when the ram was removed. As restarting works as it should.

I contacted the manufacture of the ram and they want me to send it in for replacement.
 
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