New Macbook, Airpot and Hard Drive Questions

[smootling]

Got a new macbook a few days ago, love it! I have two issues.
My hard-drive makes a popping/pinging sound. It happens often. It seems to be the hard drive parking itself or some power saving feature. Is this gonna lead to an early drive death? Is there any way to turn this off?

My second question is the airport card; turned off it reads 45 degrees, when I turn it on and start browsing I hit 60, 65. Much harder than all other components. Is iStat reading this wrong, or is a hot airport card normal?


Thanks for your time.

 

[chscag]

The hard drive noises you're hearing may be due to the operating system indexing files and folders. That will go on for a little while. If it doesn't settle down and get quiet within several days, take the MacBook back.

As for the Airport card, it's normal for it to run hot. Mine is currently at 70 degrees. You'll notice the card gets hot when you're communicating on the net like I'm doing right now.

Regards.

 

[mkrishnan]

Hey, and welcome.

HD Sounds: This one's a tough one to diagnose. The hard drive should really only park if you're shaking (violently) or dropping the computer. If you're doing those things, stop doing them. It does shut down to save power, but not many times a minute or anything like that. And that isn't associated with the sounds you describe. It's not worth disabling any of this. It's all there to protect your system, not make it die faster.

Some hard drives make a sound periodically that sounds loosely like a marble dropping onto a table (like if you rolled a marble off the top of a book sitting on a table, and it just fell that 1cm to the tabletop, that kind of sound). It varies from brand to brand. If that's what's going on, it's perfectly normal and also not related to drive failure.

There *is* another sound that's more... violent than the above, that is more of a clicking, that is associated with hard drive death. It's probably not what you're describing, but the best way is to have someone who's tech savvy listen to it. They'll know it right away. A genius at an Apple store would know it, for instance, if one is available to you.

Airport Card: I didn't realize they added airport temperatures... this one is new to all of us. There is an active discussion of it here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/397446/

Nothing conclusive, but you're not the only one and it doesn't seem to be a big deal....

 

[smootling]

Some hard drives make a sound periodically that sounds loosely like a marble dropping onto a table (like if you rolled a marble off the top of a book sitting on a table, and it just fell that 1cm to the tabletop, that kind of sound). It varies from brand to brand. If that's what's going on, it's perfectly normal and also not related to drive failure.

That description of the sound is so accurate it's almost poetic. I'm pretty sure that's what's is happening, but I'm not certain. I'll probably just make sure to keep good back-ups, if the drive is faulty it should be easy to get Apple to fix it. Thanks for putting my mind at ease!

 

[HiFiGuy528]

HD noise the way you described is not normal. My stock and upgraded Hitachi HD are silent. I would take it back to the seller.

 

[smootling]

HD noise the way you described is not normal. My stock and upgraded Hitachi HD are silent. I would take it back to the seller.

Hm, someone else said it was normal. I sprung for the extended warranty, so I think I'll just wait a month or so, if it doesn't fail, I'll assume it's normal. I haven't read of any mass hard-drive failures in the black 2008 macbooks, so I'm gonna assume it's probably just me being over reactive to any issue in my new toy. Thanks for the input.

 

[smootling]

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1234166&tstart=135


Seems their are plenty other people with my problem. I tried all the fixes, no luck. Uninstalled them all so that I'm in no way responsible if worst comes to worst hard drive repair wise (terminal is scary!), I think I'm just gonna live with it. In that Apple thread some guy's with the noise failed in 2 years, another in 5 years. Hopefully I have good luck, no sense worrying about it now, I suppose, although knowing me I'm going to obsess over it for months

Thanks for all your help!

 

[alphaod]

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1234166&tstart=135


Seems their are plenty other people with my problem. I tried all the fixes, no luck. Uninstalled them all so that I'm in no way responsible if worst comes to worst hard drive repair wise (terminal is scary!), I think I'm just gonna live with it. In that Apple thread some guy's with the noise failed in 2 years, another in 5 years. Hopefully I have good luck, no sense worrying about it now, I suppose, although knowing me I'm going to obsess over it for months

Thanks for all your help!

You can try disabling Spotlight indexing.

Mind you if you disable Spotlight, Time Machine will cease to function.