Mac Mini: 'Clunking' noise from hard drive accompanied by brief delay in system response
A number of Mac mini owners are reporting a distinct, periodic noise emanating from the hard drive that is accompanied by a brief pause in system responsiveness.
One poster to Apple's Discussion boards writes: " I'm getting pretty regular 'clunk' sounds from the hard drive. [...] If iTunes is playing music, the drive clunks alot less often (or I don't notice it) but it does still happen. It also seems not to be directly related to the time between drive accesses, since I've had it clunk within about 10 seconds one to the next. [...] System profiler says the drive is a Seagate ST9808210A.
"To me, it sounds like someone is dropping a marble inside of the mini case. It is not quiet - and it is annoying even if it is a 'normal' behavior for the drive. The drive in operation - reading, writing and even when parking / unparking - is very quiet."
According to some reports, this issue stems from a fault tolerance test being conducted by the drive when it is momentarily idle. Unfortunately, in many cases (as in the one above), the process interrupts normal operation when the user is not idling.
In some cases, the fault tolerance tests will become less frequent after several restarts of the Mac mini, but in at least one user's case, the problem worsened in severity until a replacement hard drive had to be obtained.
If you are experiencing a similar issue, please let us know.
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making loud clicking / thunking noises, like an old grandfather clock or
something. The incidents happened more & more often, and for longer &
longer per incident, until eventually the machine was unusable and the drive
had to be replaced. (It's worth noting that the Mac Mini has a laptop-style
hard drive, too.)
From what I was told when I had it fixed, this could be caused by having a
sector of the hard drive that has been physically damaged -- as, for example,
by jostling the drive while the read heads were moving over the surface of the
disk, causing them to make contact and scratch each other up.
If your drive is doing this, BACK UP YOUR DATA NOW, and begin making
plans to have your drive replaced. It'll still be under warranty, so bring it in
for repairs.
The "dropping marble" sound described in the article, reminds me of the similar sound made by failing hard drives when their read/write heads can't reliably find track zero, and so the drive recalibrates the position of the read/write arm, during which it smacks the read/write arm to one end of its travel, making it hit a metal or plastic stop, causing the dropping marble sound. I like to describe this as sounding like a metal ball bearing being dropped on a metal table. In any case, it means the drive is failing (there's no fix for this) and needs to be backed up and replaced immediately.
Try this quick and dirty applescript written by Koncept at nonamescriptware.com. It will check the S.M.A.R.T. status on your drive(s) and return the results. Very fast and easy to use, with no need for a trip to Disk Utility.;) When completed, you can copy the results to your clipboard. Just copy and paste the following code into ScriptEditor, and save as an application or script (depending on where you plan to save it). Enjoy.
--<i>-----------------------------------------</i><br>
--<i> Script for testing the SMART status --</i><br>
--<i>-----------------------------------------</i><br>
activate<br>
display dialog "Please be patient while this command gathers information..." buttons {"?"} giving up after 2<br>
<b>set</b> AppleScript's text item delimiters <b>to</b> space<br>
<b>set</b> OD <b>to</b> AppleScript's text item delimiters<br>
<b>set</b> CMD <b>to</b> "OUT='';for d in $(diskutil list|grep '/dev/'|sed 's|/dev/||g');do OUT=$OUT@@$(echo -n $d ;diskutil info $d|grep SMART);done;echo $OUT"<br>
<b>try</b><br>
<b>set</b> retVal <b>to</b> do shell script CMD<br>
<b>on</b> <b>error</b><br>
display dialog "Sorry. The command failed to run properly."<br>
<b>error</b> number -128<br>
<b>end</b> <b>try</b><br>
<b>set</b> msg <b>to</b> {}<br>
<b>try</b><br>
<b>set</b> AppleScript's text item delimiters <b>to</b> "@@"<br>
<b>set</b> RESULTS <b>to</b> rest <b>of</b> text items <b>of</b> retVal<br>
<b>set</b> AppleScript's text item delimiters <b>to</b> OD<br>
<b>repeat</b> <b>with</b> driveReport <b>in</b> RESULTS<br>
<b>if</b> driveReport <b>contains</b> "SMART" <b>then</b><br>
<b>set</b> <b>end</b> <b>of</b> msg <b>to</b> "/dev/" & driveReport <b>as</b> string<br>
<b>else</b><br>
<b>set</b> <b>end</b> <b>of</b> msg <b>to</b> "/dev/" & driveReport & space & "SMART Status: Not available"<br>
<b>end</b> <b>if</b><br>
<b>end</b> <b>repeat</b><br>
<b>set</b> AppleScript's text item delimiters <b>to</b> return<br>
<b>set</b> OUT <b>to</b> msg <b>as</b> string<br>
<b>set</b> AppleScript's text item delimiters <b>to</b> OD<br>
display dialog "Here is a report on your drives:" & return & return & OUT & return buttons {"Clipboard", "OK"} default button "OK"<br>
<b>if</b> button returned <b>of</b> result <b>is</b> "Clipboard" <b>then</b><br>
do shell script "echo " & quoted form <b>of</b> OUT & "|pbcopy"<br>
display dialog "I have set the contents of your clipboard to the results" giving up after 5 with icon note buttons {"Great"} default button 1<br>
<b>end</b> <b>if</b><br>
<b>return</b> true<br>
<b>on</b> <b>error</b> err<br>
beep<br>
display dialog err<br>
<b>set</b> AppleScript's text item delimiters <b>to</b> OD<br>
<b>end</b> <b>try</b><br>
<p>---<br>s. stevens
I tried the script above (which I couldn't find on the nonamescriptware site), but to get it to work, I had to comment out this line (the (* and *) turn the line into a comment) (though you can just remove the line too--it's not needed to get the script to run and give you a report):
(*display dialog "I have set the contents of your clipboard to the results" giving up after 5 with icon note buttons {"Great"} default button 1*)
Script Editor complained about a syntax error with this line, reporting:
Expected end of line, etc. but found ?{?.
Script Editor highlighted the first {, preceding "Great". I can't figure out what's wrong with this line, but removing it didn't affect the operation of the script.
Though SMART might successfully report any instances of bad blocks the drive encounters, I personally don't know for sure, so I think it's still best to also test for bad blocks using a utility like Norton Utils, TechTool Pro, etc. Apple's Disk Utility won't check for bad blocks--don't know why Apple didn't include this option, since the pre-X Drive Setup did.
My hard drive make some noise:
like a "click-a-click spring" every 30 sec. approx.
isn't loud but very easy to ear in a normal house, 2' from my head...
As a follow up .... Apple replaced mine with a TOSHIBA MK8025GAS. I'm pretty sure that I origionally had a Seagate.
To the previous poster .... this is not a clicking sound. It's a loud knock.
- by dldestwolinska March 16, 2005 9:29 PM PST
- I have had this same thing happen to 2 IBM Thinkpads over a couple of years. They were company machines, so I just let the support guys take care of it. The hard drive was replaced in both cases and they said that this problem was more common than you might think.
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