MBP clicking hard disk

[newfoundglory]

As someone who works a lot of computers, this is actually quite worrying.

I've had my MacBook Pro for several months (Penryn), and it has a clicking hard disk.

If i start it up from cold, its okay for a while... very very quiet even on read/write, until say 10 minutes.... then the clicking starts. Sounds very much like the hard disk heads parking themselves constantly every 15 or 20 seconds. CLICK................. CLICK................... CLICK.

There is no clicking on big read/write operations. CLicks also very in loudness... they get louder... or if the machine is on my lap and i'm in a noisy room I can FEEL the clicks. Sometimes the clicks go away if i sleep the machine and wake it back up again.

Everything seems to check out... the SMART status and ran a verify in Disk Utility.

I am assuming this disk is unlikely to fail as i would imagine it would have done so by now. Its just very very annoying. If i replace the disk myself do i automatically void the warranty even if i dont damage anything?

 

[spinnerlys]

The SMART status report is not always right.

My iBook's HDD clicks a lot if I use it, but no imminent SMART failure is indicated either through Disk Utility or SMART Reporter.

Check if Apple covers the failing HDD. I don't know about voiding the warranty if you replace the HDD yourself, but a simple search engine search will give you more on that.

 

[misterredman]

There was an issue about clicking hard drives, due to an aggressive power management that would park the head very often, resulting in a click. The problem is that on the long run it is not good for the drive.

It may also be another kind of error so you should keep a good backup of all your data, just in case something goes wrong.

The problem with the Disk Utility SMART status is that it just check the current data collected by the SMART system. Much better would be to actively test the drive by starting the self tests, for example through smartmontools (should be available through macports)

 

[DoFoT9]

i also have a click!!!!

it is on my samsung. never been fond of them, only bought them because of the large/cheap storage they were offering.

what brand is your drive OP?

 

[mckyvlle]

Chances are it's the drive head parking very often due to over-aggressive APM. There are other threads on this, like this one.

Do a search on this forum for "hdapm" for similar discussions. Hdapm a tool that can be used to tone down the hard drive's APM settings. Download it from: http://mckinlay.net.nz/hdapm/

There are also threads like this on Apple Discussions.

 

[newfoundglory]

I have a 200GB FUJITSU MHY2200BH

It seems to make sense thats its the power settings.... i always wondered how my MBP managed over 5 hours sometimes with light usage on battery. Incredible. Just a shame this drive parking all time is so damn noisy.

I am tempted to install the new Western Digital 500gb 2.5" SATA drive... apparently its both quiet and energy efficient... if not expensive!