MBP HDD Clicking for No Reason

[txhockey9404]

I have the 13" MPB 2.53ghz, 250gb, 4gb RAM, and the HDD seems to be acting up. It is a Hitachi 250gb 5400rpm stock drive.

The first problem, which is what I named the thread for, is that for no reason, while sitting on a desk, doing disk intensive work, the drive clicks fairly loudly and seems to spin down, causing delays. Is it a faulty drive, or can this be fixed via software?

The second may be related to the first. When watching somewhat large movie files (>600mb), the video skips for about 30 seconds every 30 minutes. While this may not seem like much, it is incredibly annoying. Is this because of the speed of the drive, or is it faulty? Coming from a 500gb 7200rpm external for my iMac, I never experienced either of these problems, although I suspect the first has something to do with the motion sensor in the MBP.

Please help. Thank you

 

[jackiecanev2]

Wirelessly posted (BB 8900: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

Back yourself up, it sounds a lot like your drive is faulty and dying. So, backup and give AppleCare a ring.

 

[miles01110]

Your drive is most likely dying. Do you have a backup of some kind? Stop using it and get a USB stick or somethign you can put your essential files on, then take it to Apple or call them to get it fixed.

 

[uberamd]

The hard drive is certainly clicking for a reason, its trying to tell you "Help, I'm dying...!!!!!" Backup, repair, restore, smile.

 

[txhockey9404]

That was certainly fast. I need to get my AppleCare transferred then. (I bought it from my cousin after she didn't like it). It's just over three weeks old, so I wasn't really expecting this. I attached a recording of it, and at about the 4 second mark, there is the noise of the drive stopping. It was tilted about 5 degrees towards me when it happened this time. All of the data on this computer is still on my iMac right now because I am using that as a server, and that has Time Machine on. I'm OK for backups, but would they really replace the drive for this?

 

[uberamd]

That was certainly fast. I need to get my AppleCare transferred then. (I bought it from my cousin after she didn't like it). It's just over three weeks old, so I wasn't really expecting this. I attached a recording of it, and at about the 4 second mark, there is the noise of the drive stopping. It was tilted about 5 degrees towards me when it happened this time. All of the data on this computer is still on my iMac right now because I am using that as a server, and that has Time Machine on. I'm OK for backups, but would they really replace the drive for this?

Clicking = death. So if its under warranty, yeah. As long as its a loud clicking and you aren't mistaking it for normal hard drive activity noises.

 

[netddos]

not always the case.

clicking just could be emanating from the actuator of the head moving into the parked state.

unless hdd is reading or writing, the head is parked so that it doesn't damage the platter due to physical shock.

my uMB 13" displayed this phenomenon for months and it was fine.

that said, the clicking *could* be a sign for imminent failure as well....

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

Clicking = death. So if its under warranty, yeah. As long as its a loud clicking and you aren't mistaking it for normal hard drive activity noises.

Clicking does not equal death. Mine clicks, but only when I pick it up or tilt it, etc. If it skips, makes random loud noises, then it's dying for real.