hard drive - MacBook Pro intermittently emitting strange noise
2014-07
Jake Petroules
Starting a few days ago my MacBook Pro (late 2008, aluminium) has started occasionally emitting a strange noise. It happens maybe a couple times a day and lasts for maybe a couple minutes at a time. The computer has been working fine until now. I've not noticed any other issues besides the noise. Not sure if it's the hard drive or the fan but this obviously sounds rather concerning.
I would describe the sound as a sort of buzzing or grinding noise, which occurs either in bursts or occasionally continuously for several seconds at a time. Here's an audio sample: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4563526/mbp-noise.m4a
What is causing this issue and what can I do about it?
peanut_butter
There are three things that come to mind:
Hard Disk: Run a disk check, but I don't think this is it, I doubt any OS would boot off a disk making that noise, but since it is the worst of the possible scenarios I would check it first
Fan: If a fan is stuck, bent or has a lot of dust stuck in it it might make that noise. Try using something like Temperature Monitor to check on fan speeds and any unusual temperature increases.
CD/DVD Drive: Another moving part that might be produce such noises in case of stuck/broken parts. The least worrisome problem - try disabling the drive and see if you still get the noises.
If you feel comfortable with it you can take the back off and check for problems your self, if not you could use a can of compressed air to spray in the vents at the back and in the CD drive in an attempt to clear out possible debris.
Also as with any computer problem, I would recommend you have a updated backup of your data before you attempt any repairs.
Justin Love
There is an occasional click sound coming from my Macbook Pro (17", 2.2 Ghz Core 2 Duo) I upgraded to Snow Leopard recently, but the computer was also in for service about week before that, so I can't be certain the OS upgrade is related.
The sound has no set interval and frequency varies from rare to every few seconds.
I can alleviate the sound by turning up the fan speed with smcFanControl. Turning the right fan up about half way seems to be sufficient. Unfortunately, turning up the left fan also causes the right to turn on, because the sound seems to be slightly more to the left. The cause seems to be either a fan or heat-related.
Justin Love
Some people have apparently had trouble with fans causing noise. The smcFanControl application will allow you to set the minimum fan speed.
In this case it often seems to alleviate the clicking, at the cost of some steady fan noise.
los
Open System Preferences > Energy Saver
If "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" is ticked, the noise you are hearing is just your hard drive going to 'sleep'. This happens when there has been no activity, i.e. no read or writes being done.
The noise is coming when the HD parks its reading heads after usage. This is perfectly normal and happens because of aggressive power saving mode.
Benjamin Schollnick
Double check that you are currently up to date on your Apple Software Updates (Apple Menu --> Software Update). There are several firmware updates that just recently came out.
1 - http://support.apple.com/kb/DL893 Hard Drive Firmware Update 2.0 which supposedly addresses this (or something similar)
2 - http://support.apple.com/kb/DL853 Macbook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7
3 - http://support.apple.com/kb/DL832 MacBook Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.3
The first one, may solve your issue, the others might help alleviate the symptoms, especially the SMC update....
nik
If the laptop has been with you for some time now and
you have just started to hear these clicking noises,
it is likely to be a disk failure indicator.
But, some disks make a clicking sound once in a while normally,
its like a 'gulping' kind of click.
This is not supposed to be a problem (except for the annoyance)
Justin Love
hdapm allows you to manually send power management commands to the hard drive.
However, I had no luck with it for this problem.