G5 making cruching noise

[bobbiers]

I have a Dual 2GHz PPC G5 2GB SDRAM. I know that these machines will make a 'crunching' noise when processing, etc. but mine won't stop crunching. I recently installed Adobe Creative Suite CS3. Anyone have suggestions of what to try to make this sound stop?

 

[splitpea]

That sound is your hard drive (unless there's something wrong with your fan, in which case your machine is probably on the verge of death). If you don't keep backups, start.

Constant hard drive access usually means paging -- check the memory usage in Activity Monitor. CS3 is a memory hog and 2GB is pretty low for photo, graphics or video work these days, so increasing your RAM will probably help. Mine was usable with 2.5 GB, but I was constantly checking what else I had running when using Photoshop. It's been smooth sailing since upgrading to 4GB.

 

[MCHR]

+1

If you have DiscWarrior, it would be a good time to check for fragmentation and rebuild your drive with it.

After you get that done, backup all your files. If possible, avoid using that drive as long-term storage (for obvious reasons), and get a replacement or upgrade. Losing your data with drive prices being so cheap isn't worth it.