Loud fan on brand new macbook?

Gents,

The Whirring noise (a lot of you may be hearing) from the bottom right in the unibody aluminium macbook is the hard disk (hdd). I too was sitting here wondering what the noise was. This macbook is a replacement for a duff one I had which came with a few scratches (i'm a picky feck) - The previous one was silent - so I wonder if it had a different model HDD.

This current one anyway is a Fujitsu MHZ2250BH FFS G1. It whirrs. I know it's definately the HDD as I've used the terminal login to spin down the HDD in less than the default of 10 mins.

I am now not worried that my fan is dodgy.

I might buy a SSD drive too to treat myself 🙂

Hope this helps someone.

Si.

I noticed the humming sound on my new Macbook too. If you want to know for sure whether it's your hard drive or the fan, download Fan Control (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23137). You can then control the speed of the fan from the System pref pane. In my case it was definitely the sound of the fan. When you put your ear on the keyboard you can clearly hear it spinning (in my case).

Have you waited for the HDD to spin down before being sure its your fan... if you're not ok with command line stuff, close all open apps and make sure you have "put the hard disk to sleep when possible" ticked in energy preferences. Wait 10 mins or thereabouts and your disk should spin down and the machine will be silent.

My "fan noise" is my HDD. 100% guaranteed.

My fans are shot as well. It started about a week and a half ago when I noticed a low rumble noise coming from under the keyboard, louder at the fan exhaust slots. Sometimes it is whisper quiet and other times it is so loud you would think there is a piece of cardboard hitting the blades. Sometimes it surges trying to get going as if it feels the resistance and gives up. If I hold it at an angle the sound changes. When it is making noise, it varies with fan speed and temp. When it was new, it was whisper quiet. I guess it doesn't like the desert air here in Baghdad.

Yep, in my MB I found the same HDD model and it's making that noise, too. I dunno if there is also a fan issue, but for me it's definitely a HDD issue.

Has anybody of you guys taken his/her MacBook to an Apple Store? What did they say? I want this HDD replaced or something. That noise wrecks my nerves lately because it's getting louder (the MB was silent when I got it 6 weeks ago)

Regards!

I've got the same noise issue strictly after 10.5.6 update. Before that MyBook was deadly silent. So perhaps rolling back to 10.5.5 will help.

Well, I just updgraded my 2.0 Al MacBook yesterday for the 2.4 model and the HDD noise is way more noticeable in this one. The 2.0 was dead silent. I have the Fujitsu HDD in the 2.4 and believe the 2.0 was a Toshiba. I'm kinda cheesed off.

The 2.4 also seems to get a fair bit hotter than the 2.0, but I guess that is another post...

hey everyone,

Call me crazy but like someone mentioned earlier, I think the noise (for me i think its my HDD) came after updating the SMC firmware / EFI update.

I dunno... I got my MacBook and about 1 or 2 weeks later the first firmware update was released. Shortly after this day I noticed the noise for the first time.

Is there a possibility for installing the old firmware again?

I have a 2.0 Al MacBook. When I first got the machine (1 month ago) I was unaware of any fan noise, however it's definitely noticeable in a quiet room now - I can hear it from up to 2.5m away. I deliberated for a week whether the issue was annoying enough to contact apple about but decided to take it in yesterday. There was quite a bit more background noise in the store which made it difficult to hear the fan noise however they agreed that my macbook did sound "different" to the shop model so they've ordered a replacement fan.

What nobody has addressed is whether the loud noise -- fan or HD -- affects use or longevity of the device. The last time I noticed my HD/fan getting loud, I pretty much ignored it, since all of my applications were running fine. The machine was about two years old. Then one day about two months later, the hard drive died. I was told that there was a mechanical problem with it. Makes sense, if the noise indicates some kind of physical misalignment that caused wear.

I had the drive replaced in November 2008. Now, just two months later, the new hard drive has gotten noticeably loud. I do use this machine on the road daily. The one that stays at home has not developed this problem. My question is, how long will this brand new drive last before it goes bad as well, and is there anything I can do (besides never handling or transporting it) to prevent the damage from worsening? Four or five months is not an acceptable life expectancy for a hard drive!

hey guys
I quite agree according to what marcoabuso said...now apple has to react...

D

In order to add another name to the list...

I've got an Aluminium 2.4 MB, with a Fujitsu HDD, and I also have the same whirring (silences with pressure to the right of the track pad)...

Has anyone been to Apple yet?? Sounds like a product fault that they should fix, as we're all under warranty!

"Sounds like a product fault that they should fix, as we're all under warranty!"

Apple does fix it under warranty, and you need to bring your computer in for service, not just complain about it online.

hey,

i have a 2.4 mb unibody and experience the same annoying background noise after upgrading from a dead-silent 2.0 mb unibody which i had for a week cause i decided i need the keyboard with light.

though the fan is running at higher speed than on the 2.0 mb, i'm sure the main noise source is the harddisk (tried reducing the fan speed with fan control to 1000 rounds, and it was a bit more silent, but still, the harddisk does the most noise).

so, since i guess that both unibody mb's are built in the same way, i just guess the standard fujitsu hd is quite noisy. of course this is just a guess, but it seems likely to me...

now my question: has anybody tried to build a really silent conventional harddisk into his 2.4 mb an did it significantly help to reduce the noise? and if yes, which model would be recommended?