clunk sound every 30 secs or so, how Do I turn this off?

Entourage makes a sound like this everytime it checks your mail, maybe mail does too, but I'm not sure. Go to your mail preferences in whatever program you are using and look to see how often you have it set to check your mail for you. I'm not sure if you can turn the sound off, but you can set it to not automatically check your mail or at night you could just mute the sound on the entire system and then you won't hear it.

Hi mbp,

Mine also makes the same clunking noise. It comes from the hard drive area, and has been described by some as the HD heads parking One Apple genious told me it's a hardware issue. I am sending mine in for I hope a repair. It's a very annoying sound. I just hope they hear it when it's in for repair.

Mine does that as well (when the machine is idling). But since my tibook used to do that as well (and many laptops from other brands), i never saw it as something out of the ordinary.

Does your MBP do that often, or maybe even when the drive is not idle? If so, it could be related to Sudden Motion Sensor.

You could try disabling it temporarily to see if that changes anything. The instructions are here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300724

Also, you can try ticking off the "Put the hard drive(s) to sleep" option in Energy Saver (in Preferences) although i doubt it will change anything.

It's normal and it really doesn't matter what the actual dynamics are. Personally, I think it sounds more like a ping-pong ball dropping from 6.5 inches high by a New York taxi driver.
Regards,

Are you 100% sure it's 6.5? :))))
And was the driver an immigrant?

Hi Orcinus,

It even does it while I am on the web. I can be clicking on a link, or hitting the back button, and it will do it. I can actually stop it by turning on Photobooth, or the mirror widget.

I had read here it wasn't a hardware issue, but then a genious siad it was a hardware issue. I really don't want to send it in. I received a box yesterday. I will play with the Sudden Motion Sensor and see if that changes anything.

Thanks for the tips.

wow...iwas going to post about this too. Glad to hear it's normal behavior

This sounds a lot like an issue that came up with that last couple of versions of the PowerBook G4 last year. The noise turned out to be from certain models of the Seagate hard drive used across the PowerBook line. Seagate was contacted about the sound and they said it was completely normal - something having to do with the head parking and some kind of cooling mechanism. I don't recall the specifics but a search of these forums might turn up some more info.

It was described as a soft "ping pong" or tapping sound coming from the hard drive when it was idling. So it sure seems like the same issue.

There seems to be mix of people thinking it is an "internal" noise versus something from the speakers.

The "clunk" I hear is definitely from the sound system. Here is how you tell: Turn your volume up all the way or connect to external speakers and run for a while. If it is the speaker clunk of entourage or some other program you will be able to hear it well. Then mute the computer. The clunks will go away.

If it is the "internal" hard disk based one then none of the above will have an effect on it. I have the 120gb drive in my MBP and it is so quiet I cannot hear it at all. So my clunk is definitely the one from a program through the sound system

M

Well, mine is definately internal. And i have a Seagate.
And Seagates (both of them) in my desktop computer make all kinds of noises unlike the Maxtor that's also in there.

The sound could IMO be related either to:

- quirky SMS (if it's occuring too frequently and when the hard drive isn't idling), or

- normal head parking (if it happens at regular intervals since last hard drive activity), or

- thermal recalibration (if it doesn't happen to often, but happens both when drive is idle and not)

yea i heard this problem too...and realized it comes from entourage. i used to not hear it often but then i connected its more frequent sounding with me turning up how often entourage checks mail for me. It's the default "no mail" sound. just turn that off and you'll be good to go