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Benedikt
Level 1 (10 points)

Q: Subtle knocking sound coming from right side of MacBook

Since a few weeks my MacBook makes a very subtle but hearable knocking noise coming in irregular intervals from the right side (I put my ear on the MacBopk and waited). Coincidentally I did two things around the time the noise started: I bought a new hard drive (Western Digital Scorpio, 2.5", 8MB Cache, 250GB) and installed Leopard. Since the sound definitely comes from the right side it can't be hard drive related. According to Disk Utility the hard drive seems to be okay too.

Since the only component with moving parts is the optical drive I suspect that this might be the source of the noise. The problem is, that it's not reproducable and only occours irregularly. Plus every disk I insert plays fine (there was one incident with a DVD of "Lost" which went to pause every minute or so without pressing any button though).

Any suggestions? Thanks!

MacBook Core Duo 2GHz/2GB/250GB, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Nov 24, 2007 6:12 AM

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Benedikt

Q: Subtle knocking sound coming from right side of MacBook

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  • by no_read_no_write,Helpful

    no_read_no_write no_read_no_write Nov 24, 2007 7:06 AM in response to Benedikt
    Level 2 (355 points)
    Nov 24, 2007 7:06 AM in response to Benedikt
    umm... internal hard disk is on the right side (lower right, palm rest area) optical drive is just above it...

    there has been experience by other user that their hard disk was not detected by disk utility (disk utility said it was in good condition)and it failed...

    check maybe its the speakers or other things making the knocking sound...

  • by Benedikt,

    Benedikt Benedikt Nov 24, 2007 8:33 AM in response to no_read_no_write
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Nov 24, 2007 8:33 AM in response to no_read_no_write
    First of all thanks for the answer. The hard drive is indeed on the right side -- I got I wrong since when you turn the MacBook upside down to insert the new drive it's on the left. Sorry for that.

    Well, I listened again and the noise comes from the hard disk. I'm still hoping that this is maybe a normal operating noise (cache updating or something like that). I had a failing hard drive once and the sound was much more aggressive and more like a clicking ... any tools out there that can check the hard disk status in Leopard?

  • by NTt4,Helpful

    NTt4 NTt4 Nov 25, 2007 2:38 PM in response to Benedikt
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 25, 2007 2:38 PM in response to Benedikt
    Disk Utility may be handy. Check your S.M.A.R.T status.

    Also check wikipedia about S.M.A.R.T

  • by impulse_telecom,

    impulse_telecom impulse_telecom Nov 25, 2007 4:25 PM in response to NTt4
    Level 3 (635 points)
    Nov 25, 2007 4:25 PM in response to NTt4
    In my experiences, Western Digital drives are a little noisier than Seagate or Samsung. What you are most likely hearing normal head parking and/or the drive doing a periodic thermal calibration; it could even be OSX doing its scheduled background tasks.

    The hard drive is under the right side of the palm rest, so it is normal to hear sounds in that area. I know the Seagate drive in my Macbok is extraordinarily quiet, so I can see any new drive sounds might be worrisome. Most likely, everything is OK.

    Bill

  • by Benedikt,

    Benedikt Benedikt Nov 26, 2007 1:19 AM in response to impulse_telecom
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Nov 26, 2007 1:19 AM in response to impulse_telecom
    Thanks for your answer, impulse_telecom. Unfortunately I really can't tell these operations apart (especially since this noise comes and goes without any special action ...) so I don't really know what the drive is doing when it's making the noise. The (relatively) good news is that it's been making this noise for about a month now and I haven't noticed any data loss or read/write errors. But it could also be that since my hard drive is 250GB it might take a while for these errors to pop up. Since Leopard my boot caches had to be updated twice (never saw that under Tiger) when rebooting and I don't really know if that's a good thing and/or related to this.

    I'll try and record the noise today and post it.

    (I wanted to mark your comment as helpful too but there seems to be a limit per thread/day ... sorry).

  • by Benedikt,

    Benedikt Benedikt Nov 26, 2007 1:18 AM in response to NTt4
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Nov 26, 2007 1:18 AM in response to NTt4
    Thanks for your answer, NTt4. The S.M.A.R.T status says "überprüft" (running OS X in German) which means more ore less "verified". The German translation seems a little sloppy but Apple's German support pages confirm that "überprüft" means that everything's fine.

  • by Benedikt,

    Benedikt Benedikt Nov 26, 2007 11:06 AM in response to Benedikt
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Nov 26, 2007 11:06 AM in response to Benedikt
    Okay, I am having trouble recording the noise since it's very subtle but I think I know what's causing it. A colleague of mine from work pointed me to this Thread where someone with the exact same hard drive expierences the same problem. Apparently it's some bug where the hard drive is told by th OS to park the head after a few seconds of inactivity. Western Digital provides a fix which doesn't seem to work for everybody but I tink I'll give it a try.