small start up noise on my MBP

It's the ODD (Optical Disc Drive) checking for any inserted media.

 

You can bring it in, but if it is the ODD (what it most probably is), then it is alright. I had four Apple notebooks, and all made that sound at startup.

 

If you take it in they'll just tell you the same thing. My MacBook pro makes that noise too, so its nothing to worry about. All computers that I've used make some sort of noise about a second before the screen comes to life.

 

I certainly do.

 

All laptops with slot loading drives do that. It's perfectly normal, use the darn thing and don't worry about it.

 

It's normal. Every laptop I've owned, even non-Apple ones, have made some sort of sound from the CD/DVD drive on boot.

 

...if you take it into apple and they tell you its something different making that noise, we all want to know

 

wow i always thought it was the hard drive
you learn something new every day lol

 

It's a normal sound and it's unique for each revision.

• Old G4 PowerBook makes this 2-3 second mechanical sound.
• Old Core Duo MacBook Pro makes a 1.5 second zip-zoo sound.
• Sister's Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro makes a 1 second zippier sound.
• Current Core 2 Duo Unibody MacBook Pro makes an even faster zip sound that you can sometimes miss.

 

On my MacBook Pro its not just the optical drive. The hard drive makes a similar noise at the same time, so it sounds like: eeeeeeee--rrrrrrrrrrr but really fast

 

my late 2008 unibody 15 mbp makes a much bigger noise compare to other models