macbook makes weird clicking noises

How old is your MacBook?

Where does the sound come from? Is it from under your right palm/hand? If so, do you have backups of your data? If not, do it soon. Clicking usually isn't good, and the hard drive is under the right palm rest. If that's where the sound is coming from, your hard drive might be ailing.

Regardless of where the sound seems like it's coming from, open Disk Utility and click on your hard drive and look in the lower right for "S.M.A.R.T status". Hard drives now have some early warning detection abilities.

Could it be the optical drive acting funky?

Good luck!

its the hard drive i think ur computers ok

daehakseng wrote:
it's not that old; i got it last summer...and it's not under my palm; it comes from underneath the keyboards...and i looked at the disk utility and it said "verified"...so i don't think it's my hard drive...but it's okay even if my hard drive crashes, b/c i have an external harddrive and most of my info is on the hard drive; i don't like to use my internal drive b/c i don't want to clog it up and make it run slow...so what's wrong with it? do you think it's the fan and it has something stuck in it and it's making the clicking noises? should i take it apart or what?

Check that it isn't your MagSafe, because it's known to make very low noise when inserted and it's known to be fine.

I have a similar "problem" and have been wondering about it. My macbook is relatively new, less than a year. The noise might of started say 5 months ago. It is a weird clicking/pulse noise that comes from under the keyboard on the left top corner, it's totally random and it comes with no other issues (app freezing, crashing etc). I always wondered if it's the harddrive but I wasn't sure were exactly th HD lives inside my Macbook. It doesn't sound like it's related with the fan or anything like it either.

Does anybody else have any more insight???

Fdo

No insight other than: make sure you back up your data in case this is a sign of impending doom.

This clicking sound is specifically from the hard drive in MacBooks. The model of the hard drive in my MacBook is the FUJITSU MHV2080BHPL. I've had this click for well over a year and it only shows up when my hard drive is having to do a lot of thrashing for virtual memory purposes. I consider it entirely benign and merely a consequence of the hard drive head moving back and forth across the drive. It is very rare. Fujitsu drives historically are very reliable (as opposed to the Hitachi/Travelstar IBM drives which are historically a POS).

Nevertheless! What is the first rule of computing? Quote after me: *'MAKE A BACKUP'*. There is no excuse for not making regular backups of your hard drive. If you don't, you get what you deserve. It's that simple. *All hard drives fail.* It's just a matter of when. These days hard drives are being made cheaply, with lower quality standards than in the past, therefore they fail much more readily. Even Seagate, which I considered the hold out quality hard drive maker on the market, have recently been putting out faulty drives. NEVER depend on your hard drive.