New iBook's Noisy hard drive: bad omen?

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Roger - 22 Jan 2005 19:06 GMT

Actually it's not the latest, it's the 1gig "iBook G4," but I got a good
deal on it. But I noticed this hard drive is much noisier than that of
my G3 iBook 600--a lot of "clacking" noise when it kicks in, whirring,
etc. not really loud or anything, just noticeable relative to the old G3
iBook. I suspect the casing is less robust than on the G3 iBook.

Anyway is this a bad sign for a drive, or normal for this model?

Thanks!
Rog

Reply to this Message

Howard Shubs - 23 Jan 2005 02:55 GMT

> Anyway is this a bad sign for a drive, or normal for this model?

I'd say it's a bad sign. If you can take it to a repair shop and have
them listen to it, that might be a good idea. Or take it to a user's
group and see what they think. If you think it's too noisy, you might
just buy a replacement drive and be done with it.

Signature

Nobody knows Particle Man.

Reply to this Message

Elden Fenison - 23 Jan 2005 03:18 GMT

> Actually it's not the latest, it's the 1gig "iBook G4," but I got a good
> deal on it. But I noticed this hard drive is much noisier than that of
> my G3 iBook 600--a lot of "clacking" noise when it kicks in, whirring,
> etc. not really loud or anything, just noticeable relative to the old G3
> iBook. I suspect the casing is less robust than on the G3 iBook.

I have a G4/933 iBook. My drive was making sort of clicking sounds, the kind
you don't really want to hear. I took it into the Apple store and they
checked it out, found nothing wrong.

I later found out via research on the net that this noise is caused by the
power saving features in some drive's firmware. The noise I was hearing was
the parking of the heads or some such thing. At any rate, I've had this iBook
for a year and it's still going strong.

Signature

-=Elden=-
http://www.eldenf.com

Reply to this Message

pailface88@yahoo.com - 23 Jan 2005 21:55 GMT

The clicking sound caused by the heads parking can be eliminated
(depending on what kind of drive you have) with an app called APM Tuner
X. It will cause the heads to not park so frequently. The parking is
just a waste of time in my opinion since OS X is constantly reading and
writing, causing the head to constantly be put back into service after
having just been parked.

Greg

Reply to this Message

Roger - 24 Jan 2005 02:34 GMT

> The clicking sound caused by the heads parking can be eliminated
> (depending on what kind of drive you have) with an app called APM Tuner
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>
> Greg

Thanks Greg, I looked for this app, Version Tracker and elsewhere, but
all the links I found are dead. Any one have a live link for current
info about this app?

Thanks,
Rog

Reply to this Message

Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / January 2005

New iBook's Noisy hard drive: bad omen?