MacBook made a weird sound

[teenur]

So last night, my Macbook Pro Late 2011 made this weird motor like sound. I put it to sleep and it stopped... Nothing really serious happened so I decided to just let it rest. But this morning I started to notice that my macbook has been responding so slow, a friend told me she had encountered the same sound and had her Ram replaced. I checked mine and it says that I still have 4gb installed on it (My friend found out that only one ram was working). So I checked my system memory and this is what it said

 

[johnnnw]

Sound's like the hard drive is dying. They often get noisy and will effect performance.

Did you take this screenshot as something was booting? The free RAM is extremely low. What the noise might be it the page outs that are happening. You should consider getting more RAM, not just replacing it with a new 4GB.

 

[teenur]

I turned it off for a bit and when I turned it back on, it seems to be running smoothly now. My hard drive doesn't contain a lot of files in fact I still have 400 free space but could it still be a factor?... I check my Activity Monitor again it says 2.36 GB used... My MacBook Pro is still under its warranty, do you think they'll cover it if I either have my hard drive or RAM replaced? Also, whenever I turn my MacBook on and off, no weird sounds occur.

 

[SpoekGTi]

I turned it off for a bit and when I turned it back on, it seems to be running smoothly now. My hard drive doesn't contain a lot of files in fact I still have 400 free space but could it still be a factor?... I check my Activity Monitor again it says 2.36 GB used... My MacBook Pro is still under its warranty, do you think they'll cover it if I either have my hard drive or RAM replaced? Also, whenever I turn my MacBook on and off, no weird sounds occur.

Can't say if it's a defect or not, my guess it's not.

Your RAM was full, hence the OS needs swap space so it goes out swapping to the hard drive, which makes A: A bit more noise than normal and B: makes your system feel sluggish.

Closing apps would do the trick or a reboot in your case. Since you got only 4GB of RAM maybe it's wise to look for an upgrade to 8GB or if possible even 16GB.

I have a Mini with 16GB and my g/friend has a MBP with 16GB, swaps on those 2 machine are almost as rare as a unicorn.

Newer machines with SSD's will not behave in such a way because of the speed of the SSD, my Air with 8GB and a SSD is occasionally swapping but i hardly notice it.

I did notice something strange on your screenshot. Where it says Page-outs it says 0, technically it says it didnt swap anything for a long time but your memory is full, those 2 contradict each other. You haven't by any chance disabled your swap file have you?

 

[walkie]

Maybe was the DVD drive?, they tend to make this kind of sound when reading a scratched/dirty disc.

 

[Bear]

I turned it off for a bit and when I turned it back on, it seems to be running smoothly now. My hard drive doesn't contain a lot of files in fact I still have 400 free space but could it still be a factor?... I check my Activity Monitor again it says 2.36 GB used... My MacBook Pro is still under its warranty, do you think they'll cover it if I either have my hard drive or RAM replaced? Also, whenever I turn my MacBook on and off, no weird sounds occur.

Take it in to Apple, tell them you heard some odd mechanical sounds and that the system seemed sluggish at the time.

You can also tell them that someone suggested the hard drive could be the cause of that.

I do suggest you make a backup if you don't have a current one.

Note that the screenshot above indicates nothing that would've really caused the system to be sluggish. Unless it was your network being slow (App Store plus Chrome using CPU can indicate network activity).

 

[Krazy Bill]

I'd be more inclined to believe it's your fan bearings or the optical drive acting up before I'd blame the Hard drive or memory modules.

 

[teenur]

Maybe was the DVD drive?, they tend to make this kind of sound when reading a scratched/dirty disc.

This could be a factor as well, since when it made the noise, my Sims 3 cd was inside.

 

[teenur]

It's slowing down again, are they any ways to clean up the RAM without replacing it?

 

[snaky69]

It's slowing down again, are they any ways to clean up the RAM without replacing it?

I strongly doubt your RAM has failed. And RAM doesn't make any noise.

You're probably running out of RAM and your computer is running on virtual memory, which will make it feel a lot slower.

Upgrade to more RAM and you should be good to go.

 

[justperry]

It's slowing down again, are they any ways to clean up the RAM without replacing it?

Open Activity Monitor when this happens, if there are many page outs buy 8 GB RAM, it will help a lot.