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kingoat · Dec 8, 2006, 03:25 PM

After i come back from sleep it makes a noise like it's reading something and it's not a cd..
is that normal???

kingoat · Dec 8, 2006, 03:31 PM

also when i start up the mb it makes a wierd buzzing noise

Bolero421 · Dec 8, 2006, 05:48 PM

Could you be a little specific about the type of noise it is making? From my experience all macs with combo/super drives make some sort of noise upon wake or startup. It seems to just be mechanical parts in the drives cycling.

ghporter · Dec 8, 2006, 05:52 PM

My MacBook Pro spins up the optical drive when it starts up and when it wakes up. Does your sound come from around your optical drive?

galarneau · Dec 8, 2006, 07:22 PM

My Core Duo 1.8 makes a second or two static noise from the speakers when I wake it from sleep.

chabig · Dec 8, 2006, 08:05 PM

That's the computer checking to see if there is a disk in the drive. If the world were perfect, the drive wouldn't need to spin up to check whether there was a disk inside. But these things are mostly designed by PC people...

ghporter · Dec 8, 2006, 10:47 PM

Originally Posted by chabig

That's the computer checking to see if there is a disk in the drive. If the world were perfect, the drive wouldn't need to spin up to check whether there was a disk inside. But these things are mostly designed by PC people...

Hey...that's not nice! Ok, so they ARE the same drives as in PCs, but that doesn't mean they were designed by PC people...

Actually the drive is platform agnostic, but the only way for it to report to the OS whether or not there's a disc in it is to try to spin up. Old drives tried to actually read a disc and if they failed they reported that they were empty (sometimes incorrectly). Current drives attempt to spin up as part of their start-up process, regardless of whether there's a disc in them or not, and determine whether there is or not without much fuss. The problem is that they have to index the read head (basically they calibrate its location) before they can check, so that lovely "zip-zip" sound comes out.

chabig · Dec 8, 2006, 11:29 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

Actually the drive is platform agnostic, but the only way for it to report to the OS whether or not there's a disc in it is to try to spin up.

If Apple built drives, they'd just put a sensor in there to detect a disc without having to spin it up.

Bolero421 · Dec 9, 2006, 01:40 AM

I think it also cycles the eject mechanism to remove any improperly inserted disks (disks put in while in sleep mode or turned off). I think I remember my brother putting a disk in my drive and when I woke it from sleep it spit it out. This probably accounts for much of the noise (when I wake my macbook it makes a very similar sound to that of when I eject a disk).

Simon · Dec 9, 2006, 05:59 AM

The drive itself can go to sleep too. When it wakes up, you hear that noise. If you don't use your optical drive for a while and start up something like Disk Utility or Toast, the drive will wake and make the same noise.

masugu · Dec 9, 2006, 11:35 PM

Yeh...I complained about this on these boards right after I got my Rev A BlacBook... Funny, my TI PowerBook nor my G3 Pismo ever made this sound. Different mechanism I guess. I likened the sound to something Curly from the Three Stooges used to make.