The new MacBook Pro clicking hard disk

3 Comments Published February 26th, 2009 in Apple Tags: .

While using my MacBook Pro it happens that the hard disk makes a little noise time by time: a silent "click". Noisy hard disks are not a good sign, but since the beginning I was hoping that it was the energy saving "feature" parking the heads of the hard disk when not used. This wasn't stopping me to periodically check the hard disk health searching for bad sectors and other warnings. The feeling that something was not OK never leaved me.
Finally tonight I checked on Google, but I found different answers: some people says "back up now and prepare for a disk crash". Some other people says "don't worry: I got my laptop running and clicking for years, and it's normal".
Then I found this thread on Apple's Support forum, where a link to this interesting article can be reached.
I am looking forward to try the solution proposed to avoid that scary noise. Let's see what it happens.

3 Responses to “The new MacBook Pro clicking hard disk”

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1 Doug Aghassi Mar 26th, 2009 at 21:07

The interesting article above has the answer to fix this problem. I know this because I wrote that article. the short answer is to install “HDAPM” on your computer. The problem is that installation of that program/script can be difficult. The article I wrote is long, if you do not like to read, skip down to the end of the article for the fix.
2 Luigi Mar 26th, 2009 at 21:23

Thanks Doug for writing that article.
3 Rich Mar 30th, 2009 at 15:22

I just got my MacBook Pro 17″, and decided to play with iMovie and Garage Band a little. Testing to maybe video log (blog) ect.

While recording, there is an audible clicking in the recording, consistent, every few seconds. I turned off put HDs to sleep, and power management, and used the laptop plugged in… I disabled SMS per Apples directions for testing… The damn clicking is still there.

That is going to get annoying as hell using the iSight very quickly!!! WTF Apple!!! A $4000 laptop should not be ‘clicking’, and your mic should not be picking it up!