My iBook likes to ring.

[Peter Griffin]

I've never used my iBook in a place with complete silence until last night and boy was it a trip. Every 10 seconds or so I'd hear a faint "beeeep." Not the commercial with the annoying girl kind of beep, but the kind of ringing you hear in your ear ever so often.

It's not loud enough to be heard anywhere beyond 3 ft but I find myself inching closer and closer anticipating it everytime now which is pretty frustrating (since I can't control myself). I hope there's nothing wrong and I guess the reason why I'm posting this is to see if otheres on here have experienced similar.

Beeeep

 

[AoWolf]

Well you sound a little paranoid to me. Was the beep louder then the fan or hard drive? My guess would be that its a normal operating sound that is too quiet to hear.

 

[shadowmoses]

Its probably your hard drive, they sometimes make this sound....I wouldnt worry about it until something serious happens, in the mean time just try and ignore it best you can,

SHadow

 

[fartheststar]

Its probably your hard drive, they sometimes make this sound....I wouldnt worry about it until something serious happens, in the mean time just try and ignore it best you can,

SHadow

if you listen to or play loud music for 15 years you won't be able to hear the sound any more, even when it's quiet.

Seriously though, you're probably ok. When I came over to the Mac world, my machine (G4 MDD) was so beautiful (yes, I do still think so) that I was paranoid at EVERY time the fan went slightly louder ...etc....

 

[Dreadnought]

I have the same, it's the harddisk. If you upgrade your ram, you shouldn't hear it as much, it doesn't need to get so much things from your HD.

 

[DavidLeblond]

I get the same beep. Usually right after I hear the beep I plug in my external harddrive and set it to back up. Paranoid, me? No!

Yesterday when I installed the latest Security patch it was doing a LOT of heavy harddrive work when I heard TWO beeps, one louder and higher pitched. I backed that mother up right away!

Still no crashes though, so I guess thats fine.

 

[Peter Griffin]

Yeah I probably am paranoid but that's probably because I have higher expectations for this machine than I did for any of my PC laptops.

Dreadnought- Can you further elaborate on why adding RAM would decrease such noise? I thought the HD and RAM were two completely seperate things.

 

[Laser47]

Yeah I probably am paranoid but that's probably because I have higher expectations for this machine than I did for any of my PC laptops.

Dreadnought- Can you further elaborate on why adding RAM would decrease such noise? I thought the HD and RAM were two completely seperate things.

The more ram you have the less you hard drive has to work to read the information off of it. Thats why ram makes you computer faster, because instead of reading off a slow HD it can read it off the ram way faster than the HD, thus making you computer faster.
And it also has to do with virtual memory..
He is saying that if the HD is making that noise then adding more ram would help because the HD wouldint be used as much.

 

[Peter Griffin]

The more ram you have the less you hard drive has to work to read the information off of it. Thats why ram makes you computer faster, because instead of reading off a slow HD it can read it off the ram way faster than the HD, thus making you computer faster.
And it also has to do with virtual memory..
He is saying that if the HD is making that noise then adding more ram would help because the HD wouldint be used as much.

Would it reduce heat on the left wrist rest as well as increase the lifespan of the HD sincecit wouldn't have to spin as much? I'm thinking about getting some additional RAM just so it doesn't feel like I'm putting my hand over a stove everytime (and ofcourse speed).

 

[OutThere]

I've heard this on my iBook G4, 3 separate iMac G4s and a PowerMac G5 DP2.3...as far as I can tell it is the hard drive doing tiny little I/O actions, or something in the computer processing as you work on things. On the iMac G4s it showed up the loudest playing World of Warcraft, on my iBook it does it randomly, and on the G5 it shows up every time I'm editing in Final Cut Pro, which is all I use the G5 for, so it shows up all the time...

Nothing to worry about, though it can be really annoying if you pay too much attention to it.

 

[Laser47]

Would it reduce heat on the left wrist rest as well as increase the lifespan of the HD sincecit wouldn't have to spin as much? I'm thinking about getting some additional RAM just so it doesn't feel like I'm putting my hand over a stove everytime (and ofcourse speed).

Theoretically, yes

 

[Laser47]

Lots of stuff I have beeps.
The cdrom drive in my pc beeps when loading a disk.
My printer beeps whenever its coming out of stand by mode
My tv beeps whenever i watch jerry springer..

 

[Dreadnought]

The more ram you have the less you hard drive has to work to read the information off of it. Thats why ram makes you computer faster, because instead of reading off a slow HD it can read it off the ram way faster than the HD, thus making you computer faster.
And it also has to do with virtual memory..
He is saying that if the HD is making that noise then adding more ram would help because the HD wouldint be used as much.

I have nothing to add! Also, the heat (as said above) will be a bit lower, your iBook will become much faster, snappier, etc. and your battery life will also increase (don't expect hours, but a half hour could be achievable).