[audiffred]

I have a PowerMac G4 733 that I have become quite fond of lately. I wanted to verify that other users have observed the loud hard drive clicking. The drive seems to click after a few minutes of inactivity and click again once the drive needs to be accessed. It is not set to sleep at all (running 10.1).

[aaanorton]

SCSI drive?

[audiffred]

Originally posted by aaanorton:
<STRONG>SCSI drive?</STRONG>

No. Stock machine, 40gb IDE.

[iamnotmad]

Originally posted by audiffred:
<STRONG>I have a PowerMac G4 733 that I have become quite fond of lately. I wanted to verify that other users have observed the loud hard drive clicking. The drive seems to click after a few minutes of inactivity and click again once the drive needs to be accessed. It is not set to sleep at all (running 10.1).</STRONG>

Do you ever put the machine to sleep? I have experienced something similar after putting the computer to sleep. After it has been asleep once, the drive seems to go to sleep quickly and wake back up on use (very often). I have since stopped putting the computer to sleep altogether.

Not sure if you are experiencing the same thing. I am hoping the first 10.1 update 10.1.1 will fix this.

[audiffred]

Originally posted by iamnotmad:
<STRONG>

Do you ever put the machine to sleep? I have experienced something similar after putting the computer to sleep. After it has been asleep once, the drive seems to go to sleep quickly and wake back up on use (very often). I have since stopped putting the computer to sleep altogether.

Not sure if you are experiencing the same thing. I am hoping the first 10.1 update 10.1.1 will fix this.</STRONG>

The machine does sleep a lot. This is the same impression I get - drive is very sleepy. I would rather the drive run continuously as this is less wear.

[rob5243]

I have a 466 G4 and I have never ever heard the HD do it's little churning sounds. It's great! The machine is so quiet all I hear is the fan. It was so annoying to have to listen to the disk hits when my old computer was loading stuff. Is this a new technology in hard drives that makes them quiet? I use the 30GB drive that came w/ the machine.

[dr. zoidberg]

what brand is the hd? i�d really like to know... ibm deskstar maybe?

[rob5243]

Mine's a Maxtor ATA, original that came w/ the computer.

[indigo]

Don't want to scare you, but I've had some MAJOR problems with Maxtor drives in the past making a clicking noise and eventually dying. My first Maxtor drive lasted nearly a year before it succombed to this strangle clicking death. Maxtor is fantastic about replacing drives and sent me a new one under warranty very quickly with no questions asked. This replacement drive lasted about a week before it came down with whatever clicking problem the first one had. It too died. Maxtor again replaced the drive. This third drive has lasted nearly a year without any problems. Knock on wood. I wasn't doing anything strange with the drive - used it for normal everyday sorts of stuff - surfing, some games, word processing, but nothing heavy duty.

I'd back your data up immediately and get maxtor to replace it. Better to be safe with your data before it disappears with your clicking HD.

FWIW, my Quicksilver came with an IBM deskstar which seem to have their own set of problems lately.

[dWREK67]

Goo.. I have two drives in my comp: the 30 gig Maxtor that came with it and a 30 gig Deskstar. The computer is a dual 533 G4, bought it in January. The Maxtor has ALWAYS made this clicking sound. Expecially when doing things with large files.. movies, audio, burning a CD. I have never heard a hard drive make this noise. Compared to the old HD in my PC, the G4 is basically quiet (except for the clicking). Btw, this is my first Mac.

So today I was unzipping a large movie I had on a CD. When I dragged the file onto the desktop it automatically copied onto the Maxtor as this is the drive OS9 is on. It was unzipping and the computer was clicking away as usual.

Then it stopped unzipping, the little progress bar froze. I tried pressing stop and force quitting but eventually the comp froze. I probably should have just let it sit, but the computer was taking way longer than it should have to unzip this file and I got a little impatient. I restarted the computer and it wouldn't boot!

By not booting, I mean it just sat there and clicked. Eventually, the screen showed the question mark folder. Well I got the computer to boot off of CD but it would not recognize any drive (Maxtor or IBM). I shut down, disconnected the Maxtor and rebooted off of the CD. The IBM drive appeared. The Maxtor, however is not even recognized by Drive Setup.

I think the drive may be dead but I'm not sure. I've never had a drive die in the middle of copying some files.

Can anyone offer me any advice on recovering data on the Maxtor?

If not, could I still get a replacement even though the drive is almost a year old?

Derek

[Joe Cool]

Hey, my new Dual 800 does this too. I think its just the "arm" (lack of technical term) moving over to a sleep position. I don't think it is a big deal.

[dWREK67]

Originally posted by Joe Cool:
<STRONG>Hey, my new Dual 800 does this too. I think its just the "arm" (lack of technical term) moving over to a sleep position. I don't think it is a big deal.</STRONG>

You mean the drive head (arm = drive head). And yes I do think this is a big deal when it happens multiple times a second in the middle of copying a file!

I was capturing some DV into iMovie before the HD failed. In the middle of a capture the HD would click and the display would freeze. This happened multiple times. Result? A big gap in the resulting DV file. Resolution? I moved the iMovie project over to the IBM drive and had not a single hiccup. It's a headache to have to recapture ten minutes of video becuase of the hard drive going to sleep!

It's unsettling to hear a precision piece of machinery make such a grating noise.

**On a positive note, I've had no problems with the Deskstar. I see they suffer from almost the exact same problem!

[OldManMac]

My Maxtor drive did the same thing about a month ago, but it has now stopped. I've got a G4/400 AGP, and for a little while, it sounded like an electric typewriter, clattering away occasionally. It can be a big deal, as that indicates that the read/write head is hiting something, which it shouldn't do! I'd forgotten about it until I read this thread. I'm not terribly worried about the drive crashing, because I back up regularly (had a few drives crash already, and hard drives are still one of the least reliable computer components), and I don't keep any files on the computer, just applications. I will probably replace the drive after I refill the wallet from the holiday spending season!

[dWREK67]

But does anybody have any idea on how I can get files off of this drive. I'm not 100% convinced it's dead... upon booting the drive makes a lot of the click noises.

[OldManMac]

Have you tried running Norton Utilities or Alsoft Disk Warrior (from a CD, not the hard drive)? Sometimes these will show a directory structure problem and can rebuild them. If this doesn't work, the drive is probably shot, and the only way then to get data off is to send it to a data recovery service, which takes the drives apart in clean rooms, and can recover data. This is an extremely expensive procedure, however; I've seen where a customer sent a drive to recover data that was mission critical, and he paid over $600 to get it off his drive!

[dWREK67]

I don't have and utilities. This may be the time to invest some money. Which would you suggest?

[Divx]

Without recording the noise that your drive is making I can only guess what you mean by 'clicking'.. But I have a powerbook with an IBM Mobilestar drive which makes clicking all the time, sounds like the seek head is hitting the side of the casing of the drive, seriously, scares me.

[dWREK67]

By click I do NOT mean normal hard drive sounds. When you read data off of a drive, obviously it clicks as the head moves around and whatnot. This click is messy. The system freezes while the drive makes between 1-5 loud tapping noises in about 2-3 seconds.[/LIST]

I have a quick silver 733 with an IBM drive that makes a clicking sound every once in a while sort of like a tinny mechanical click, it reminds me of the sound of 2 spoons hitting each other. It has been concerning me but I haven't had time to look into it further. I back up regularly, perhaps this is a defect in the 40gb drives in the quicksilver machines? Any suggestions as to what to do?

[dWREK67]

I'd recommend getting rid of the drive ASAP!

I documented my troubles a little more thoroughly at the Apple Insider boards:
Mator Hard Drive Clicking

Whatever the problem is, it's not an Apple thing. Maybe I'll scan some PC boards and see if others have had problems with these drives. Someone else has a thread here talking in particular about the IBM Deskstars. I haven't any problem with mine, but it appears both of these drives suffer from the same problem. Is this what the class action law suit agains IBM is for?

Derek

[MindFad]

My dual-800 makes a funny noise at startup and from waking. An odd rattle, then everything is fine. No problems yet. ::OMG, knocks on wood::

[Love Calm Quiet]

Have you checked with VersionTracker.com for APM Tuner? http://www.versiontracker.com/morein...id=8162&db=mac

&lt;&lt;What is APM Tuner?
&lt;&lt;APM Tuner is a piece of software to adjust the Advanced Power Management Value (APM Value) for "non-ATAPI" ATA devices (e.g. hard disks) in the internal ATA bus and expansion bays of recent PowerBooks.
&lt;&lt;Advanced Power Management is a feature found in hard disks for portable usage aimed at conserving power. However, APM can effect the user experience, creating a sense of "lag" or clunking sounds when the head is parked. By increasing the APM Value, APM will interfere less with your system. &gt;&gt;

Especially since the problem started after Sleep... may be parking heads too often?
Although a beta, it's a freebie and been around for years, so might be worth a try?

[JoeG4]

One time my machine made a HORRIBLE eerring noise when I started it up, but I think that's just that damn fan duct screw rattling off aagainst the CPU heatsink.

The one annoying thing on my hard drive is whenever the computer shuts down you can hear a loud FFFFFSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTT right after the power goes off... kinda like some piece of paper rubbing against the drive cylinder.

I need to listen in about my hard drive, I htink it clunks too.. this machine makes a lot of noise

[EMD-F40PH]

I doubt that it is a mechanical fault of Maxtors and more a OS power managment fault. That is if your getting the same sound that I hear. I'm on a 733 Quicksilver and with OS 9.x I never hear the sound, but it will reveal itself if I am running in OS X.x.

The sound that I am hearing will occur every now and then while using the computer. I could be just reading a web page, whatever and it will sound almost the same as when you tell the system to sleep via the menu items. I could understand if I had the hard drive set to sleep often in the energy saver, however I have it set to never sleep or spin down. I will put it to sleep when I am leaving it for an extended period but not while it is in use. My main concern is that this may not be problematic HD now but the way the OS is currently handling it could lead to problems in the future....

If I can find a way to record the sound I will post it.

Cheers,

[SpeadFreek]

EMD...
I don't know if the free head-parking utility (or parking-reducing-utility) APM Tuner at the link above will work with OSX, but it might be worth checking. It's seeming more and more like this *clicking* is the heads parking -- more often than they need to. I can tell a difference on my Pismo in both sound and performance when I use APM to set head to park less frequently.

Anybody above (with the clicking) also *try* the APM Tuner - on 9 or X ? It's a freebie.

[Pikachu_G4e�]

No problem with my G4/733 Quick Silver's HD. However, I still can't figure out why it uses the 7200 rpm instead of the original 5400 rpm. I didn't upgrade it Anyway, the CD Writer did make a loud noise when I put some slightly scatched CD. Here is the link to my previous " Topic" regarding this. Good Luck


Best regards from,
Tan Li Kang

[The Ancient One]

I had the same problem with my dual 800 and the 60GB IBM drive. It turned out to be entirely due to the sleep function. If you sleep your system then wake it, the drive will spin down frequently, regardless of your Energy Saver settings. This is a known problem which I confirmed with extensive testing. If you turn your machine off or leave it on the screen saver when you're not using it, the problem will disappear. Maybe 10.2 will fix it.

Don't worry - I have a quick silver 733 and it does the same thing. I've used 3 others, and they make the same sound as well. I love this computer - I couldn't care less about it being a little loud.

[EMD-F40PH]

In OS X I have disabled sleep and HD spin downs and I no longer get the sound I was getting before. As I thought and you've noted the fault seems to be with how OS X handles sleep, or at least HD spindowns.

Cheers,