[gizzard]

I've received two brand new PowerBooks from Apple and both of them have "buzzing" optical drives. The symptom is that whenever I boot up, restart, or wake from sleep, the optical drive buzzes for about 1/2 second. Oddly enough, when there is a CD/DVD in the drive, this "problem" goes away. My brother who had a Rev. B 17" PB said there was a slight buzz also. How widespread is this issue? And is this acceptable?

[agfrost]

My rev. D 12" does this as well. My assumption is that the machine is simply checking for the absence/presence of a disc in the drive. Don't have any experience with any other pbook than my own, though.

Jay

[bighead]

Matsushita drives seem to do this when the power cycles.

The new Teac SuperDrives in iBook G4s do not seem to do this.

All of my Matsushita slot loading drives made within the past couple years have made this sound. I believe it is normal as well as acceptable.

[gizzard]

I'm going to check the PowerBooks out at the local Apple Store to see if they have this issue. Any other experiences?

[ibook_steve]

As stated, this is perfectly normal. The drive is resetting during the events you mentioned. There is nothing you can do to prevent this.

Steve

[Jens Peter]

Originally posted by ibook_steve:
As stated, this is perfectly normal. The drive is resetting during the events you mentioned. There is nothing you can do to prevent this.

Steve

Prehaps it's normal - but I find it very annoying, that a computer that expensive makes that king of noise...

But prehaps thats just me...

[gizzard]

Bump for agreement. Two Geniuses said the noise was "normal" - the noise is the result of components being powered on.

[brapper]

Every slot loading drive I've ever seen/used does this. It's perfectly normal and nothing to do with quality. That's just what you get when you go slot.

As the poster above said, it's a half second so my suggestion is to not find it annoying.