hard disc noises

[seanofford]

Hi all,

I have had my new MBP for a month now and mostly it is silent (apart from soft fan noise when it's working hard), but lately I have noticed that sometimes the hard disc will start to crackle just like an old PC. This will go on for quite a while - several minutes. It happens mainly (almost exclusively) when I have the computer on my lap rather than at my desk.

Is this a sign of a hard disc problem, or normal?

Thanks,

Sean

 

[mad jew]

Crackle? Use Disk Utility to verify your drive.

 

[squeeks]

a crackle "like an old pc" sounds like its reading and writing to the drive???

or can you tell when its doing that?

 

[seanofford]

a crackle "like an old pc" sounds like its reading and writing to the drive???

or can you tell when its doing that?

When it's doing a lot of things. Disc utility reports no problems.

 

[diadem]

It makes that noise when it is accessing data randomly scattered on the drive or when accessing multiple difrent file. Also when it has read and write tasks at the same time to perform.

 

[Santa Rosa]

Sounds like what the hard drive should sound like to me.

If its bothering you a good tool I have found to use is SMARTReporter. Its a program that puts a little icon up top and displays the SMART status of your hard disk. So it will warn you if its about to fail.

Hope that helps!!

 

[JCPH]

Make sure you're not covering the vents while it's on your lap. That'll cause overheating and then trouble. Sounds like you are just getting your hard drive to access files all over the disk. Are you sure it's your HD and not your CD/DVD drive? I have found those to be rather noisy.

I doubt anything is wrong, but back-up your files just in case. There are plenty of videos on the internet showing what can happen after a HD starts making funny noises. It's one thing to lose your files... Another to lose them in a fireball.

What are you specifically doing while the noise occurs? See if you can upload a sound clip to somewhere for others to analyse it.

 

[seanofford]

Thanks everyone. If you eat Rice Crispies then you'll know the sound I'm hearing!

I've installed SMARTreporter which shows all is well. I will try to determine what I'm doing when it happens next time and if I can record the sound I will.

Thanks for all your help.

Sean

 

[DA-Steve]

*sigh* another thread where i can put my hand up for having the same problem.

the read/write noise coming from my machine is very loud. sometimes it sounds like its struggling so hard i feel the need to put it out of its misery!