Hard drive click + beep

Hi, JLTmac,

Sounds you have the same problem like many of us.
Myself, I found out that the utility "hdapm" (from "hard disk automatic power management") solved all beeping and freezing issues with my MacBook Pro 13" - just give it a try:
http://mckinlay.net.nz/hdapm/

(The idea is the following: it seems that for some strange reason, the MacBook's HD wants to go to sleep too often and tries to park the drive heads - and this "collides" with normal read/write access. The hdapm utility tells the HD to "stay awake" by switching it to a mode with lower power conservation, hence it doesn't try to go to sleep any more.)

Installing the utility is quite straightforward and described in the readme. You may want to check your system log file using console after installation and reboot to check whether hdapm did start. (On my system, I had to fiddle with the files' permissions to get the system to run them at startup.)

Good luck!
jan

You must be just about the only person I know who got HDAPM to successfully install and work with 10.6.2...

Are you sure it is working?

if yes,

what did you do different in your setup to get hdapm to work with 10.6.2...?

I have heard of hundreds and hundreds of UNsuccessful hdapm attempts with 10.6.2 and maybe 2 people whom successfully installed...

again, are you sure it is installed and working correctly?

Also, could you be very specific about this line of text you wrote,

"On my system, I had to fiddle with the files' permissions to get the system to run them at startup.)"

thanks, Doug

doug in albq wrote:
You must be just about the only person I know who got HDAPM to successfully install and work with 10.6.2...

Have you looked at the pkg that was created to simplify the installation? Take a look at <http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10081798#10081798>

I have no problem installing HDAPM, whether I use the package installer you liked to, or I do it manually. The installation is not the issue, the fact that the program will no longer run under 10.6.2 is the issue. I used hdapm for over 2 years on a different macbook running 10.5.x.

Your sig says you are running 10.5.8, is that still the case?

I am talking about hdamp not working under a clean install of 10.6.2

doug in albq wrote:
I have no problem installing HDAPM, whether I use the package installer you liked to, or I do it manually. The installation is not the issue, the fact that the program will no longer run under 10.6.2 is the issue. I used hdapm for over 2 years on a different macbook running 10.5.x.

Odd. I haven't needed hdapm since I got the Hitachi drive but I just ran it manually and it worked fine.
Are you getting an error?

Your sig says you are running 10.5.8, is that still the case?

Where are you seeing 10.5.8? I've got it set to "MacBook Pro Unibody 17" 2.93Ghz Mac OS X (10.6.2)"

Message was edited by: BatmanPPC

I thought I saw you sig was 10.5.8...maybe not you.

I get the basic “Setting APM level to 0xfe: FAILED: APM not supported.”

Is your Snow Leo setup a clean install or did you migrate user/computer setting from 10.5?

anyway, hdapm will not work for me with SL, and I know how to install it, installation is not the issue.

doug in albq wrote:
I get the basic “Setting APM level to 0xfe: FAILED: APM not supported.”

What drive do you have? Seems maybe some drives have an issue with setting APM.
See <http://ocroquette.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/how-not-to-kill-a-brand-new-hard-di sk/>. Maybe you can use that work around to get it to work?

Is your Snow Leo setup a clean install or did you migrate user/computer setting from 10.5?

Clean install.

under 10.6.2 i have even better result with HDAPM and my fujitsu 500gb: some time it says success, sometime not supported. and the clicks remain anyway.

I got my uMBP as a replacement for my MBP that worked fine, it was warped... I too noticed the cliking and the odd beep. I don't know weather the noise got quoted or I just stoped caring as I have read these forms... Then yeterday "bang" hard drive dies no warning just nothing but a white screen on boot. Just as may of you I had the seagate 500gb 7200rpm had "asg" as well. I brought it in to the local authorized repair depot and they are supposed to replace the drive tomorrow... I suppose even if they give me the same drive and I have the same issue 5 more months from now I will just take it in for another drive, and so on till my app expires.. Lol thank god I bought a time capsule! Now if the drive in that fails apple will have one ****** off customer!!!!

Hi all,

I have been waiting to buy a MBP 17 inch since early 2008...
1st i read humors that spammed the internet about the launch of new series of mpb... i trusted them and waited and waited... they finally launched them ealry 2009...

but ever since the launch people have all kinds of problems with it... I am SICK & TIRED of reading about this HDD problem : http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9673415#9673415
the confusions here are unlimited... its been over almost 8 months, and apple still hasnt fixed this problem... people keep companin and complain and helpin each other... apple seems to be drifting away from what they started as computer business and concentrating more towards the ipod and iphone business...

all my life i have used pc's, and being a user for design/web and soon video, all suggestions to the best machines from co-workers and other professionals have been to go for an apple machine... i just don't know why, even though pc's have the not so liked windows and the floating viruses that try to attack the pc's... windows still never acts weird with hardware, even so when so many various companies parts are put together sometimes in a single computer...

its simple to keep a pc safe from viruses if one knows how to prevent it... and its also possible for windows to work beautifully with 3rd party softwares that make the machine user friendly and work faster... one just needs to knows what to use as anti virus and other softwares...

I am still interested in switching to an apple machine, specifically the mbp 17 inch... but i wish the great things been told to me were true about apple machines being actually flawless...

If after this long a wait, and 133 pages of reading through without even having the machine(and this is just 1 of the threads that has reached this length & time)...
others :
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2054387&start=0&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2077220&start=0&tstart=0

http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=251&start=0#threads
851 pages of different complaints / threads... each page has 15 threads listed... = 12765

I am quite curious that customers who have bought the machines what they must be going through...

My biggest concern/question... Is the machine really worth buying... and if so, how much more time will apple take to fix a problem that they about time did away with... and how come none of the unsatisfied customers haven't filed a law suit again apple... Its about time they fixed these issues for a computer that is one of the most expensive laptops in the market... and all professionals worldwide are buying and suffering with...

Does anyone have any clue if one purchases a new mbp 17 inch, if the problems of hdd floating past these 133 pages still exist...

green.on.green,
I was in a similar frame of mine, with similar background/experience.

I went for a new mid 2009 15" MBP in 2009 just after they were released as my 3.5 year old ASUS finally died on me.

So far I have had a complete logic board replacement (after less than 2 months), and I just took it back to Genius bar yesterday with the Grey screen of death.

This time it looks like HDD death, after only 6 months normal use.
A couple of days ago it froze in bootcamp. I ran through the troubleshooting list, even managed to get into safe mode and try a very very slow backup which eventually froze. I have an older Carbon Copy, but have still lost some time sensitive data.

It has primarily been used in static situations and I've been careful about protecting it and moving it.

I love the design, but it has failed me on reliability as a replacement business machine due to technical issues.

Apple support seems great. Machine design quality seems great. Machine technical reliability FAIL so far. Which sort of negates the previous two greats by a magnitude of 100:1 *****, as reliability is a key criteria when using a machine for business.

I'm not sure what to do when I get it back.

But to answer your question...I don't think the issues are related to just the 17" models, as I suspect they share components among them.

Apple would gain my respect more if they admitted design flaws/component issues openly as they came up and resolved them.
Perhaps that's why they charge so much for their Apple care extended warranty add-oon, thought currently all my issues are in the first 6 months.

Good luck.

Ya, I've gotta comment here. The 17'ers are just fine. The rare accounts you hear about are rare and really far fetched. Im not getting into semantics here but your safe. Go get a 17' MBP. I have 3 of them, all running 500GB HDDs @ 7200 rpm. As well as a 15" running that same drive. yes, you see and hear all the negativity from people who have had problems and there are valid but most (if not all) of those issues have been fixed.

And to the person speaking about Apple "not owning" their mistakes. Tell me...does Microslow? Does Dell? Does Toshiba? Does Sony? Does Intel? Does Nvidia? Think again.

PLease refrain from from nailing Apple for a problem hear or there that they are obviously working on, if its not fixed already. No computer maker is perfect, even Apple. If you wanna bounce the % of problems with PCs against those of Apple, Apple will BLOW those stats off the wall.

I love the MBP design, but based on my personal experience it is less reliable than my previous Asus laptop...so far.

1. Bought Asus Z71V running win xp as Full time desktop replacement. Burnt out geForce 6600 go graphics card after 1 year (I did a lot of 3d work), they ended up just putting the HDD back in a new barebones and gave it back to me. Lasted another 2.5 years then the graphics finally blew. No problems apart from that. Still using the same HDD in an external 2.5 enclosure as a mobile backup. SMART checks out ok.

2. Bought new 15" MBP to replace dead ASUS. 2 months in the firewire stops working so they had to replace the whole logic board. 4 months later the HDD dies. Total 6 months use at < 20% of former 3d work, mainly using the 9400M . Win7 in Bootcamp using the 9600M gt for mainly 2D real time charting work.

My unibody MBP experience also turned me into an obsessive temp watcher and cooler fanatic, as I know from previous experience that heat is a laptop killer (and dust) and these things get hot, despite all the protestations that they are supposed to.

I would wager that Apple reliability is not significantly different from the industry norm, and saying otherwise without extensive proof based on ACTUAL defect and return rates benchmarked against major pc manufacturers is well, just silly, fanboish, inaccurate and entirely based on personal opinion not fact.

My personal reliability opinion is based on my own direct experience, which is all I have to go on.

But if I have to hear another "oh, you must have just got a bad machine" from an apple fanboi again I think my head will fall off from my eyes rolling too hard.

fyi, I am platform agnostic and use all OS's with no particular bias.

ps; I love my iTouch

Hi all,
I own a Mac Book Pro 2,33 Ghz 17" 2007 (previous version), I would like to replace my Hitachi 7k100 7200 rpm original drive with a newer, bigger and reliable one.
I was thinking to buy a Seagate momentus 7200.4 500Gb, do you think it can be a good choice?
Do the Seagates 7200.4 500gb drives (or 320gb) still have issues or problems?
Or maybe I should better go for a WD Scorpio Black 320Gb 7200 rpm?

What's the quietest one among these 500 or 320 7200 rpm drives?

Thank you very much in advance.