Mac mini (late 2012) HDD ticking/clicking noises

Hi All. Joining the discussion a bit late but I thought I'd tell my experience with the clicking issue.

I've had a Mac Mini for over 4 years now. The first 3 years everything was working great (despite the slowdown after filling the drive and running multiple apps) There was a clinking noise, but I took it for granted. One day, things got really slow and apps like Photoshop couldn't remember the last thing I did. Then, I got the beachball of death. I tried to solve problems myself but ended up sending it off for repair. The repair guys managed to save all my data but the HDD was done for so they installed a new 1TB Hitachi HDD and sent it back. Thing were back up and running and I did a big back up of everything I had so far. Eventually I started to notice the clicking but again, I took it for granted. I didn't even mention it to the repair guys as I didn't think it was a problem. 8 Months down the line I was happily working away with no apparent issue of slowdown or apps not running as they are supposed to. I tried to upload a file to the web and BAM! Beach ball of death! I'm a panic I rebooted and tried to back up the last month of files to an external HD, I didn't get far before the Mac was unusable. I could even get the thing to boot to the desk top.

I phoned the same repair guys and told them what happed only this time I mentioned that I could hear load clicking noises every so often. They told me that it was a sign that the HDD is failing and that I should send it in for data recovery. They were confused as the HD was only 8 months old.

I sent it in only this time they couldn't save all my data, they rescued 120gb of 380gb. I was gutted. They have intalled a new HDD on warranty and I have received to Mac back only yesterday.

After booting up the Mac for the first time I was listening out for any unusual sounds. Low and behold, the clicking was back. Its not as loud as the last one but I'm worried it'll get worse and in 8 months down the line I will be sending it back again, maybe sooner.

After reading through this topic I noticed most replies say that its normal for the clicking but others say get a replacement. I'm unsure what to do now. I work from home and can't afford to keep sending my mac away for repairs (the time and the money).

Please be warned if you think its OK that its clicking. It might be fine at first, but it'll get you when you least expect it. My feeling is that everytime theres a click, the HDD is dying.

I'm expecting a call from repair to discuses the clicking on my new HDD. I'll be back to let everyone know what they say. In the mean time, back up Back Up BACK UP.

Ok so it's 2016. How is everybody doing? I had an intermittent clicking on my i7 Late 2012 server. Two 1Tb disk drives. Here's the problem. I've been nursing the machine the entire lifespan. It seems that at these hard drives are slow, or something has always been wrong with the drive and/or controller.

Now I installed 10.11.3 (El Capitan rev 4) onto the main HD and guess what. No boot. Verbose didn't show anything. Safe-Mode didn't ever come up either. I can still see my data on the disk, by booting off another device. I think I've had a lemon the entire time. I've tried everything including DiskWarrior 5 but nothing has brought the boot back (it does boot into Recovery though strangely).

It hangs on the progress bar and the Apple even in Verbose mode. The bar moves, and then slowly stops at around 65%.

I thought it would be no problem to get the OS upgraded. But now it's totally dead. My last resort is to take the drive out and try SpinRite on it.

Has anybody else had to deal with a hobbled, limping Mini for the last three years?

Report back! This could be VERY handy information for everybody.

James

Likely the drive is now very damaged. Upgrading OSX stresses a HD and can cause a marginal one to fail. That sounds like your case.

I would try to recovery data from the drive.

After recovering data, what happens when you boot from an alternate drive and try repairing the drive via Disk Utility?

I suspect it says unrepairable. Is the SMART status listed as verified?

I'm new to this thread. Have a late 2014 Mac Mini, fusion drive. Have had it 8 months. Quiet as can be. Then it started a low-volume ticking (I thought it was my printer from across the room), sounds a lot like the hard drive read/write. Took it into a Mac store. They opened it up, cleaned the interior (couldn't have been that dirty in 8 months...), ran diagnostics, all says it is fine. Couldn't hear any noise either, even with ear to the casing (but granted, it was noisy in the store). Here I am a week out from that experience, and I'm hearing the noise again. Having Mac Support call me later today, we'll see what they say. Very annoying. The computer was certainly quiet for the 8 months I had it, and my prior Mac Mini that I had for 5 years was equally quiet. If this were a PC, I would say this is simply operational noise, but that noise hasn't been my experience with the Mac Mini.

When making that noise open Activity Monitor and go to the CPU tabe. Make sure that under View Shaww all is checked. Is mdworker use a lot of CPU? mdworker is associated with Spotlight search. If the disk is continously indexing/rebuilder it may ne the source of the nose. That is still abonormal

No, mdworker is using 0.0% CPU, 0.75 CPU time, 2 threads, and 524 PID.

Now, under the Disk tab, there are 12 separate mdworker entries, one with 60KB written (all other writers are 0), and with reads ranging from 8KB to 160MB. Something called mds and mds_stores seems to be reading a lot....689MB and 946MB respectively, and mds_stores is also writing a lot (301MB and growing....).

EDIT: Shortly after my post, the mdworker CPU time increased to 46.13, so maybe the noise is related to Spotlight. I'll have to see if there's a correlation between that and the noise. Just odd that I never noticed it before in 8 months (and I use the computer all day).

mds and mds_stores are also associated with Spotlight indexing.

Try re-indexing Spotlight

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716

Re-indexing did not seem to do anything for the noise. FWIW, Apple's had me do a hardware reset using command+option+R+P while starting the computer (holding the keys down until 2 chimes). Waiting now to see if the noise comes back (it is not constant). There is another reset combo, too, but that did not work on my computer (shift+ctrl+option+power) (which should not turn the computer on – if it does, like it did for me, then that key combination does not work for the particular computer). Will report back. So far, seems quiet.

ijamessaxon wrote:

Ok so it's 2016. How is everybody doing? I had an intermittent clicking on my i7 Late 2012 server. Two 1Tb disk drives. Here's the problem. I've been nursing the machine the entire lifespan. It seems that at these hard drives are slow, or something has always been wrong with the drive and/or controller.

Now I installed 10.11.3 (El Capitan rev 4) onto the main HD and guess what. No boot. Verbose didn't show anything. Safe-Mode didn't ever come up either. I can still see my data on the disk, by booting off another device. I think I've had a lemon the entire time. I've tried everything including DiskWarrior 5 but nothing has brought the boot back (it does boot into Recovery though strangely).

It hangs on the progress bar and the Apple even in Verbose mode. The bar moves, and then slowly stops at around 65%.

I thought it would be no problem to get the OS upgraded. But now it's totally dead. My last resort is to take the drive out and try SpinRite on it.

Has anybody else had to deal with a hobbled, limping Mini for the last three years?

Report back! This could be VERY handy information for everybody.

James

Originally 2.5" hard disks as used in laptops and of course the Mac mini were only capable of rotating at a speed of 5400rpm. Even in more recent times Apple have tended to pinch pennies and only provide 5400rpm drives even though now 7200rpm drives are available. Clearly an SSD drive is the fastest possible option but you will notice a significant speed difference between a 7200rpm and 5400rpm drive.

If you do have hard drives still then they are just as likely to fail over time as before although they can still last for years if your lucky. My own personal experience has been that Hitachi now called HGST, have been one of the better makes but this changes over time. It more applies to 3.5" desktop class disks but Western Digital went through a really bad patch and so have Seagate.

If a hard disk has developed problems then it is only going to get worse. Yours does sound like it has a hardware fault. Diskwarrior includes the ability to check the hardware of the drive, what does it report?

Note: This is not a Mac specific issue, we just had a drive fail in Lenovo laptop as an example.