*I just got my macbook air in december it is a 1st gen i got it on clearance at best buy for 1039.00 it was new in box..i have been using it and it is working fine. my only issue or what i cant tell why it does this is it makes these click noises is that normal ??? and it also makes this litttle beep noise randomly. i don't know if it is normal or something i should be worried about i have taken it to the apple store and asked them what it was they said it was normal but then again they didnt hear the noises ..please if some one has some info it would be great thanks
I also have a 1st Gen MacBook Air that I got in October. It does exactly the same thing. I assume this is something to do with the harddrive. (i have the 80gb hdd model). I have not questioned this, however I am not sure whether this is normal. Recently my MBA has occasionally started to make fan noises upon start up.
I think the problems you had may have been unrelated or just random symptoms of one big problem. When a modern Mac laptop shuts off on its own, as yours did, that's heat. Either the Mac is perceiving it's too hot, or it really is to it. An overheating Mac can cause all kinds of crazy problems.
Most people I've noticed w/ clicking and beeping Airs have isolated it to the HDD, and they are having no problems with their Airs, or problems that can be directly related to the HDD.
Frankly, I have no idea what's up. It may be nothing or at least relatively trivial. I just did some checking and discovered the sudden motion sensors in Macs often make a clicking noise when they activate or deactivate. Probably the hard drive locking down or releasing. And sometimes the sensors lock the drives when there's no need, out of extra sensitivity. Factor in, I'm guessing, when my Air automatically spins down the HDD in a period of disuse, it probably locks the heads, too, with the same mechanism the sudden motion sensor triggers. So I hear the click sometimes when the HDD spins down or spins up, when the lock releases it. If I set the HDD to never spin down no matter what, I never hear the click.
The beep, I don't know. Laptop drives can make some weird noises when they spin up or down. Some of those noises are indistinguishable from a beep. Whether or not these noises indicate a defective or failing hard drive, that's up in the, well, air.
