Hard Drive Beeping

Question

Hard Drive Beeping

All of A Sudden My Hard Drive Will Kind of Start Beeping. Sometime Almost Like a Musicial Chime..When The Hard Drive is Beeping Mac OS X is Unresponsive. Sometimes I Have to Shut it Down Because It Won't became Availbable Again. Another Problem With it is that when my computer shuts down , i boot it up and it shows either a block symbol or blinking folder. I then have to choose the startup disk when booting up again. What's going on and what is the solution?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Feb 26, 2012 12:09 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Feb 26, 2012 12:14 PM in response to ChrisDontQuit

If there is beeping I doubt it comes from the hard drive, but it may be coming from your computer, and it's a sign of possible memory or hardware failure.

Audible noises from a hard drive other than normal motor sound is a sign of hard drive failure.

As a start you should back up your data to avoid losing it. Then do the following:

Install or Reinstall Lion from Scratch

If possible backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive.

Boot to the Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Erase the hard drive:

Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
Quit DU and return to the main menu.

Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Install button.

Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.

If reformatting and reinstalling doesn't fix the problem, then I would take the computer in for service.

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