efiebke Posted July 12, 2008 Share Posted July 12, 2008 Hello - The main drive (Macintosh HD) of my Mac Pro (please note set-up below) seems more noisy at present. I can hear it spin, for example, when I open a program or verify the drive. It's not quite a grinding sound and it's not constant. This louder sound seems to happen during the "search" phase before starting a program or when verifying the disk. Maybe it's just a normal sound and I'm just noticing it now. However, the other two drives to the computer do not seem as noisy when I use the verify function. My main concern is that the main drive might be failing. Should I take this concern seriously and start looking for another hard drive to replace the main one? I'm not an expert computer user. And although I've been using the Mac Pro for over 1 1/2 years, I "grew up" in the computer world using PCs. The sound that the main drive (to the Mac Pro) is currently making is sadly similar to the sound the hard drives make on a nearly 10 year old Dell workstation that I still use on rare occasions. Thank you in advance. . . Ted Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triplets Posted July 13, 2008 Share Posted July 13, 2008 The other day an external drive was louder than the rest and while trying to open sessions it would give me the beach ball and I needed to force quit the program. When I went to verify the disk it displayed a B-Tree error (a bad thing) and wouldn't mount again. So I had to initialize the drive, which means reformatting, aka erasing everything. In your case it could be a formatting issue like it happened to me. Drives on a mac are supposed to be quiet. I guess your suspicion is correct and I would be considering backing up that drive just in case with Time Machine. If it's a software issue, formatting will fix it, assuming you backed everything up. If on top of that you hear clicking noises then it's a mechanical issue and then you should be considering buying another drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
efiebke Posted July 16, 2008 Author Share Posted July 16, 2008 The other day an external drive was louder than the rest and while trying to open sessions it would give me the beach ball and I needed to force quit the program. When I went to verify the disk it displayed a B-Tree error (a bad thing) and wouldn't mount again. So I had to initialize the drive, which means reformatting, aka erasing everything.In your case it could be a formatting issue like it happened to me. Drives on a mac are supposed to be quiet. I guess your suspicion is correct and I would be considering backing up that drive just in case with Time Machine. If it's a software issue, formatting will fix it, assuming you backed everything up. If on top of that you hear clicking noises then it's a mechanical issue and then you should be considering buying another drive. I haven't had the time, unfortunately, to investigate this further. Sadly, I haven't had the time to do ANYTHING with the computer or music. Maybe this weekend I can spend some time and research this out. Sure do hope the hard disk isn't failing, though! I haven't backed up its contents and, right now, I don't have the extra cash to purchase a new one. Thank you for the reply. Ted Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocBop Posted July 16, 2008 Share Posted July 16, 2008 Drives do get noisy as they get older, bearings start to wear and things whine and roar. WD drives I've had start sounding like 747's taking off when they get old, but they still work fine. If it's a scraping kind of noise then I'd get a backup and start looking to replace the drive. Better safe than sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STILL Posted July 16, 2008 Share Posted July 16, 2008 Drive starts making noise, you start shopping and quick! Don't turn it off, and get it backed up right away. Here's a cheap solid online backup service that I'm starting to use. Initially you may take awhile getting things up there depending on connection, but for the price you can't beat the service - offsite, redundant, secure like a MF, CHEAP etc etc...... Offsite is always better, and they will send you whatever files you want if your house burns down etc, you buy the drive and they send it stocked.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
efiebke Posted July 16, 2008 Author Share Posted July 16, 2008 Ugh. . . First, I sincerely appreciate the thoughtful replies. Thank you. I just turned on the Mac Pro and allowed it to boot up. I then used both "Verify Disk" and "Verify Permission" functions and the hard disk drive in question has passed both verifications. Again, I am NOT an Apple-expert computer user, but I am hoping that this news is a good thing. The sound that I am attempting to describe happens only when the hard disk is doing its searching thing. I do not think the sound is related to the actual mechanics of the drive. But what the heck do I know? To play it on the safe side, though, I'm going to do some research and purchase a back-up program and new disk drive. Better safe the sorry. Ted Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STILL Posted July 17, 2008 Share Posted July 17, 2008 Some drives are just noisy, but if it's a new sound, then you have problems coming.....always better to be sure than nervous.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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