Uh oh...lagging, beach ball, strange noises from hard drive?

[mmapples]

So i've been using my MBP pretty heavily since I got it (first batch...W8608). Today it started to act up on me (programs started lagging, couldn't switch between apps without the spinning beach ball, almost froze on me a few times) and I've been hearing a strange noise from the left side of the computer - something between a scratching and clicking.

Any thoughts? Is my hard drive headed south?

 

[riciad]

Sure sounds like it.

That's how my iMac was behaving prior to the hard drive dying. I kept trying to convince myself the funny noises were coming from other things on my desk.

Try Hardware test to see if anything shows up. Mind you, my drive checked out OK even though it was faulty.

Phone Applecare if it continues. They delivered a replacement to me in 24 hours.

Back-up as soon as possible just in case.

 

[MacDawg]

I had a "similar" type problem with my iMac.
I backed up to an external Firewire HD using CarbonCopyCloner.
I reformated the internal HD writing "zeros" and cloned back.

No problems now.

Bottom line, back up now... everything.

Then discuss your options.
Don't wait.

Woof, Woof – Dawg

 

[mad jew]

That's not a very old hard drive. Do you have a healthy 8GB of free space on the drive? Have you tried running fsck?

 

[trainguy77]

have you checked your the SMART satus?

 

[mmapples]

Ran Disk Utility and this is what I got:

Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Illegal name
Illegal name
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Volume Header needs minor repair
1)
Macintosh HD
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit


1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair

The 'Repair' button is grayed out, however. The S.M.A.R.T. status is verified.

 

[mad jew]

Follow that fsck link I gave before. You can't repair the disk you boot from.

 

[mmapples]

Will do. And will report back with what I get. Thanks!

 

[mad jew]

No worries and good luck. Although your problem isn't dire and fsck doesn't lose data, keep everything backed up as usual.

 

[mmapples]

fsck seems to have done the trick for now. Thanks mad jew!

I suppose in the future, the only way to really know whether something is actually wrong with my hard drive or whether it just needs repairing is if this doesn't work?

 

[mad jew]

Yeah, you should get a few more years out of that drive yet. Sometimes the file system gets knocked out of whack which is where fsck comes in to repair it.

The Intel machines seem to strangely be more susceptible to this, which is weird since it shouldn't have anything to do with the type of CPU. Maybe it's just the new thin designs.

Irrespective, it should be fine. If things start acting up again then run a quick check in Disk Utility. It doesn't take long.