Why does my hard drive seem to always be grinding?

[jkaz]

My home Mac Pro is used mostly for video editing during the day, a computer game and web surfing at night.

2 internal hard drives, 8 gigs of ram.

My office iMac has 4 gigs of ram, runs 2 copies of said game and web surfing and I never hear it make a sound.

I use activity monitor daily, but really just for watching my ram and processors.

So, what would cause my hard drive on my MP to seem to be grinding too much?

I repaired permissions 2 days ago.

(side question: is blue or active ram just as good as green or free ram?)

Thanks,

Jeff

edit: also there is- in red text- in my activity monitor: CompressorTranscoder (Not Responding)

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[-tWv-]

The hard drive could be failing. I would definitely back it up just in case.

Some drives are just noisier than others. The WD My Book External HD that I have makes a grinding sound when I am accessing it and my HD inside my macbook never makes a sound. You may have a different kind of hard drive in your Mac Pro which is more noisy than the one in the iMac which could be why it is making more noise. But just to be sure, make sure you have that drive backed up with time machine.

 

[toxictrix]

back up data immediately. It could be failing....

 

[Bill Gates]

I'm not sure that I would jump to any conclusions about the hard drive just yet, but I am of the school of thought that says you should always be prepared for the worst, and have a verified backup of any important data.

What happens if you kill the "CompressorTranscoder" process? Does the hard drive activity die down? Is the hard drive always noisy, even right after a reboot, before any applications are started? What programs do you have launching as startup items? Does the "CompressorTranscoder" process start at login? I would also follow the steps on this page, if that process continues to be troublesome. It was linked to on an Apple discussion forum, related to that particular process hanging.

 

[jkaz]

thanks all for the responses.

after a reboot, the compressor process is gone.

the grinding isn't 'obscene' but i'm always surprised at how often it seems to be grinding.

and sometimes the general performance and load times seem disappointing on what i would have thought to be a fast machine.

perhaps this hanging compressor issue is happening when i'm noticing hard drive grind and slower performance.

i'm out of experimentation time for tonight, but again- thanks all for your response. i will read deeper in this issue tomorrow.

Jeff

 

[surflordca]

On MacRumors tab there is an article on a recall about to happen from concerning some HDD. Go and read this to see if you are one of them. If I remember it's the 500 gig drives. Would that be you