iMac Hard Drive question

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Level 1

1 points

iMac Hard Drive question

My iMac's hard drive is making a constant running sound - like it's accessing data - this has brought my system to a crawl at time (and is reminding me of my old windows system). The Hard Drive is at 50% full, the Apple Disk utility says it appears OK. Restarts have only helped for about 5 minutes then back to the gurgle sound. I have closed all extra running programs (simplify, cover sutra, etc) Any thoughts? Hard drive is a replacement from the original Apple drive that failed last year.

Thanks,
Todd

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.2), Dell Laptop with Vista Home

Posted on Oct 15, 2009 4:06 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Jerry Moreno

Level 1

94 points

Oct 18, 2009 9:05 PM in response to tdownerd

It is possible to have your HD starting to fail. I have a 24" Al iMac and just took it in today for the same symptoms. Unfortunately, this will be the second HD replacement I'll have had on it (first replacement was this year in May). However, the Genius ran the tests in front of me and it listed as "failing." In other words, a little more time and it might have been unbootable. I would recommend taking it in.

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Answer 2

Oct 19, 2009 7:13 AM in response to tdownerd

Depending on which version of the iMac you have, if it's out of warranty and needs a new hard drive there not that scary to change, the current glass one require a bit more patience but if you follow a good guide you can have it done quite safely and easily in 15 minutes.

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Answer 3

tdownerd Author

Level 1

1 points

Oct 22, 2009 5:16 PM in response to tdownerd

So here is the verdict: The hard drive was fine, just permissions repair (which I thought I did and makes me livid that I had to pay for someone to do that!) But also, the Hard Drive fan failed! So that had to be replaced. My mac seems much better now, and doesn't make the gurgle sound. So here is my next question....if I had an Apple store close would it have still cost me $144 and 4 days to have a hard drive fan replaced and disk permissions repaired? Thanks,
Todd

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Answer 4

tdownerd Author

Level 1

1 points

Oct 26, 2009 8:30 PM in response to tdownerd

seemed to be a Spotlight problem

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