[roders]

Hi everyone, as this topic title states, my HD's making a lot of noise (stock serial ata 160Gb) ever since I installed the OS (panther) although strangely enough, not while it was actually installing it.
I've got quite a lot of stuff installed now, so I defraged with drive 10, this seemed to alleviate or reduce the problem for about a day.
Now the sound itself is a very loud clicking/clacking sound as disk head reads/travels across the disk platter, this happens CONSTANTLY when I perform any action that I have not done since that boot up (i.e. that is not cached);
So, say If I right click on my applications folder in my dock, this produces a menu of all my apps in that folder (surprise surprise) now the first time I do this action it can take maybe up to 4 or 5 seconds (accompanied by loud clicking/clacking from the HD) to appear sometimes (on a G5 1.8!!!) yet when I try this action the second time (when it has been cached) it happens instantly with no delay AND no clicking/clacking from the HD. this is the same for basically any operation I do, from launching an app, to even changing the view type in the finder.
I know a HD making a loud clacking noise is supposed to be a sign of a HD about to die, I've run the hardware test CD (short test) but nothing came up.
I'm only using the stock amount of Ram, but should the HD be being hit quite so often, and performance seems to slow down loads whenever the HD is hit.
Is this just a lack of Ram, if so, what's up with the very noisy HD?

[Pidd]

Originally posted by roders:
Hi everyone, as this topic title states, my HD's making a lot of noise (stock serial ata 160Gb) ever since I installed the OS (panther) although strangely enough, not while it was actually installing it.
I've got quite a lot of stuff installed now, so I defraged with drive 10, this seemed to alleviate or reduce the problem for about a day.
Now the sound itself is a very loud clicking/clacking sound as disk head reads/travels across the disk platter, this happens CONSTANTLY when I perform any action that I have not done since that boot up (i.e. that is not cached);
So, say If I right click on my applications folder in my dock, this produces a menu of all my apps in that folder (surprise surprise) now the first time I do this action it can take maybe up to 4 or 5 seconds (accompanied by loud clicking/clacking from the HD) to appear sometimes (on a G5 1.8!!!) yet when I try this action the second time (when it has been cached) it happens instantly with no delay AND no clicking/clacking from the HD. this is the same for basically any operation I do, from launching an app, to even changing the view type in the finder.
I know a HD making a loud clacking noise is supposed to be a sign of a HD about to die, I've run the hardware test CD (short test) but nothing came up.
I'm only using the stock amount of Ram, but should the HD be being hit quite so often, and performance seems to slow down loads whenever the HD is hit.
Is this just a lack of Ram, if so, what's up with the very noisy HD?

I think its the nature of the beast. I received my G5 1.8 yesterday (ordered Oct 19 received Oct 24 by ground shipping to British Columbia, Canada). I have 1.5 Gb of RAM and I have added another 160 Gb Maxtor drive. The Maxtor drive does not make as much noise as the stock drive. Besides the drive noise the machine is very quite - except when you use the DVD drive. That device make quite a noise sounds like a jet taking off!

Very impressed with speed of the G5 1.8. I've upgraded from a G4 933. Very worth while purchase!