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MacbookPro clicking noise and slowed performance

S

scharah

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 15, 2008
50
1
My macbook pro is making a strange clicking noise, possibly the hard drive, I don't think it's the disc drive.

It's quite quiet but consistent, it clicks about 14 times then stops for 4 seconds, then does it again. I noticed it about 10 minutes in to turning on my macbook, whilst I was playing the SIMS. The game completely slowed down, so I shut it down, and now almost all aspects of performance have slowed down and the clicking persists.

Any advice or ideas as to what it could be?

Many thanks,

Sarah.
 
More than likely it's the "click of death"--

I hope you have a backup of your data......
 
Backing it all up as we speak.

What should I do after that, other than wait for the poor thing to die?
 
Take it to Apple and let them see if the HDD is dead. If you have AppleCare they will replace it, if you don't try to replace it yourself or ask someone else to do it for you. Apple may charge you a lot to replace it.

scharah said:
Backing it all up as we speak.

What should I do after that, other than wait for the poor thing to die?
Click to expand...
 
It was bought in John Lewis and I believe it is still under warranty. If not, my house insurance might cover it.

Its barely a year old, is it common for this to happen to a relatively new MacBook pro?
 
scharah said:
It was bought in John Lewis and I believe it is still under warranty. If not, my house insurance might cover it.

Its barely a year old, is it common for this to happen to a relatively new MacBook pro?
Click to expand...

Definitely not. I'm not sure if John Lewis has technicians, I haven't purchased any technology from there in a looong time.

Talking of things, I need to get some stuff from M&S tomorrow.
 
I've been looking up many threads on many forums with people complaining of strange MBP clicks, and all of the accompanying videos are nothing like the sound my mac is making. It's so quiet, you can only hear it if there's total silence in the room and you have your ear right close up to where the sound is coming from (the bottom right hand corner).

If it weren't for the slowed performance I don't think I'd even be worried.
 
scharah said:
I've been looking up many threads on many forums with people complaining of strange MBP clicks, and all of the accompanying videos are nothing like the sound my mac is making. It's so quiet, you can only hear it if there's total silence in the room and you have your ear right close up to where the sound is coming from (the bottom right hand corner).

If it weren't for the slowed performance I don't think I'd even be worried.
Click to expand...

Whatever it is, it definitely needs looking into.
 
scharah said:
I've been looking up many threads on many forums with people complaining of strange MBP clicks, and all of the accompanying videos are nothing like the sound my mac is making. It's so quiet, you can only hear it if there's total silence in the room and you have your ear right close up to where the sound is coming from (the bottom right hand corner).

If it weren't for the slowed performance I don't think I'd even be worried.
Click to expand...

definitely hard drive.
 
You might check to see if Spotlight is indexing, which can slow your performance and place demands on your drive during the process.
You can determine if it's indexing by the Menu Bar icon:
attachment.php
(not indexing)
attachment.php
(indexing)
 
Everything is now backed up using the time machine.

I downloaded the SMARTreport programme which seems to think there is nothing wrong the the hard drive, and I haven't experienced any more slow performance this morning but the clicking noise persists.

Tried to take a video of the noise so I could share it, but it's too quiet for the video to pick up as the wind is so extreme outside!

----------
GGJstudios said:
You might check to see if Spotlight is indexing, which can slow your performance and place demands on your drive during the process.
You can determine if it's indexing by the Menu Bar icon: Image (not indexing) Image (indexing)
Click to expand...

spotlight doesn't appear to be indexing, in fact I've never seen it doing that.
 
I've noticed my macbook makes clicking noises as it cools down after running processor intensive tasks, presumably because the bits of metal expanded as they got hot, and then return to their original size.

Its not as bad as the clinking noise my Harley Davidson makes as it cools down, but it definately makes a few clicks.
 
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