[FrozenTaco]

I've got a 12" PB G4 1.33 GHz with 60G HD. Love it, and have had very few problems (knock on wood).

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this and knows if it's something I should worry about: I noticed yesterday while lifting it off the desk that it made a strange whrrring noise. This noise is definitely new; it occurs whenever I move my laptop fairly quickly up or down, and when I tip the base up. It doesn't happen when the lid's down.

I would say that this has something to do with the SMS taking effect and parking the HD heads - but I'm almost 100% certain that my machine doesn't have SMS (I bought it in 2004 and SMS wasn't introduced until 2005 with the new 1.5 GHz models).

Any tips on what this could be? I did a disk check because I'm paranoid like that but SMART data say's everything's fine...

[ibook_steve]

Your machine does not have the SMS. That's the hard drive or if you have an optical disk inserted. This is why you should not move your machine unless it is asleep.

Steve

[analogika]

Back up your data NOW.

That noise is your hard drive's spindle. When it starts to vibrate when you move the 'book, you usually have only a few more weeks until the hard drive dies.

BACK UP YOUR DATA NOW.

[FrozenTaco]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Back up your data NOW.

That noise is your hard drive's spindle. When it starts to vibrate when you move the 'book, you usually have only a few more weeks until the hard drive dies.

BACK UP YOUR DATA NOW.

Oh good, always the answer you want to hear...

Well, everything's backed up onto an external drive and current as of today...besides that, is there anything that can be done now, in anticipation of a HD failure? Can it be preemptively serviced? Let me guess, I just wait for the day when it doesn't start at all, and then get a new one.

I feel like a bunch of 'book's in this cohort have had/are having HD problems...do internal drives have some (short!) natural lifespan or is it an inherent issue to these models?