Some advice please - Beeping hard drive

[arf]

I have a 4 month old powerbook which seems to have a problem. I first noticed this when I was cloning my whole HD to an external device using SuperDuper - about half way through I started to hear an intermittent high pitched beep from under the trackpad, once the clone had completed the beeping stopped.

Now I have since learnt that this is where the HD sits (under the trackpad) I have run disk utility from a boot disk and the SMART status is 'verified' so what's going on? Further info. that might be of help is that when it started to beep last night I get the spinning beachball and the OS freezes for the duration of the beep.

This fault only seems to be occuring when the system is under heavy load, otherwise I have a happy powerbook! Has anyone had a similar problem - is my HD on the way out???

 

[fitinferno]

I have a 4 month old powerbook which seems to have a problem. I first noticed this when I was cloning my whole HD to an external device using SuperDuper - about half way through I started to hear an intermittent high pitched beep from under the trackpad, once the clone had completed the beeping stopped.

Now I have since learnt that this is where the HD sits (under the trackpad) I have run disk utility from a boot disk and the SMART status is 'verified' so what's going on? Further info. that might be of help is that when it started to beep last night I get the spinning beachball and the OS freezes for the duration of the beep.

This fault only seems to be occuring when the system is under heavy load, otherwise I have a happy powerbook! Has anyone had a similar problem - is my HD on the way out???

Is it beeping or more like chirping?

When my hd died (as well as when others I know had a hd death) it started chirping, not beeping. The noise sounded exactly like my little parakeet...so much so that at first I thought it was indeed the bird making the noise...then I found it was my PB

 

[Sun Baked]

Usually when you start hearing that under normal conditions, the drive is on it's way out due to thermal death.

But the drives may undergo more frequent recalibrations when they heat up under constant heavy use.

 

[loneAzdgari]

I remember hearing reports of PowerBooks beeping. Although they weren't about the Hard Drive, that was about the logic board. My 1.25GHz Powerbook has alway beeped just below the audible range.

 

[katie ta achoo]

I remember hearing reports of PowerBooks beeping. Although they weren't about the Hard Drive, that was about the logic board. My 1.25GHz Powerbook has alway beeped just below the audible range.

When I'm in a completely silent room and typing, I hear a little chirp or beep every time I type a new character. It doesn't do it for spaces or line breaks, only when a new character is up.

Does anyone else have this?
Is it harmless or will my PowerBook asplode?

 

[Scooty Puff Jr.]

My Powerbook made this chirping/beeping/whining noise occationally with 10.3. I'm pretty sure it's not a drive or fan, but something electrical and it usually happened when there was a lot of graphics being drawn making me think it's GPU related.

Anyway after upgrading to 10.4 it happens all the time and is getting on my nerves. I don't think there's anything one can do though.

 

[fitinferno]

My Powerbook made this chirping/beeping/whining noise occationally with 10.3. I'm pretty sure it's not a drive or fan, but something electrical and it usually happened when there was a lot of graphics being drawn making me think it's GPU related.

Anyway after upgrading to 10.4 it happens all the time and is getting on my nerves. I don't think there's anything one can do though.

Well...you could open up the HD and try to see if it's a mechanical error that is creating the chirping noise.

Other than that, you'd probably have to go out and get a new HD

Hehe, your s/n is very awesome, btw

 

[eva01]

mine beeps at me like once every 2-3 weeks, its a faint beep and sometimes scares the crap out of me, even if i can barely hear it

 

[fitinferno]

mine beeps at me like once every 2-3 weeks, its a faint beep and sometimes scares the crap out of me, even if i can barely hear it

That's really bizarre...have you tried bringing it to the Apple store and seeing what they think?

 

[eva01]

nah, i have gotten beyond that (still have applecare but meh) if the HD fails i will just replace it with a 80GB 5400RPM, since i backup weekly to external HD.

But yes it is really weird that it does it, i think it is trying to talk to me personally

 

[fitinferno]

nah, i have gotten beyond that (still have applecare but meh) if the HD fails i will just replace it with a 80GB 5400RPM, since i backup weekly to external HD.

But yes it is really weird that it does it, i think it is trying to talk to me personally

Good thing w/the backups! I get so many people coming to me in my job (I'm an IT Advisor) begging me if there's anyway they can get their data back since their HD failed and they didn't back it up...so it's great to see there are rational ppl out there who do back up their HDs

Anyways, all you need to do now is write a programme that will translate what it's saying...hehe.

 

[zv470]

After about a year my Powerbook made that same chirping and sometimes beeping noise... It got more and more frequent. Eventually it started to recalibrate/do heavy reading from the drive all the time... became unbearably slow. Anyway took it in and Apple replaced the drive for me. New drive, no chirping, no beeping, and speed is back. what was cool is I got my powerbook back the night that Tiger got released so had to buy it then and there, oh yeah

My Powerbook made this chirping/beeping/whining noise occationally with 10.3. I'm pretty sure it's not a drive or fan, but something electrical and it usually happened when there was a lot of graphics being drawn making me think it's GPU related.

Anyway after upgrading to 10.4 it happens all the time and is getting on my nerves. I don't think there's anything one can do though.

Scooty Puff Jr. I think you're hearing another noise... a high pitch sound, I've heard it on a wide range of computers... Powerbook, Powermac, even PCs. Every time the graphics card has to do intense work. I can hear it when I go to dashboard, scroll windows up, even deleting txt with the delete key. Consider yourself lucky most people can't hear that high a frequency