Hard drive clicking on 6 day old Macbook

[tomacwhite]

I have just been using my Alu Macbook this morning and I've noticed the hard drive has started making little clicking noises. I know from experience that this is generally a bad sign, but for it to happen on a computer that isn't even a week old yet is a concern.

It happens every 30 seconds or so and it makes a little "click". It sounds like its the drive doing something. It occurs even if the computer is on the desktop doing nothing.

Any ideas? Surely this cannot be early signs of HDD failure already?

 

[MBHockey]

It could be just the normal parking of the head. How quiet is the room when you hear it? My experience with HDDs has been that the failure-indicating death click is louder than thn normal mechanical sounds of the HDD.

What is the disk's SMART status in Disk Utility?

 

[tomacwhite]

Yeah total silence pretty much. I am currently copying lots of .avi's over to my iPod and its not making any noise at all.

Does the hard drive park itself that often? i.e. if the Mac is idle with no applications open and just sitting on the desktop, is a light click every 30s or so normal?

I think I may be mega paranoid because I recently lost both my iBook and Lacie external backup drive in a very short period of time.

I just did a disc verify and it said the volume appears to be OK, written in green. SMART says "Verified".

 

[sammich]

You aren't supposed to hear clicking from your drive, unless you've got your ear next to the trackpad.

EDIT: is it a distinct click? or is it a duller muffled sound? A death click usually hangs your computer.

 

[DoFoT9]

some knowledgeable person once told me on here somewhere when i posted about hearing a clicking..

clicks are good it means that the head of the drive is correctly being parked or something like that.

i wouldnt worry about it.