Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

inaland

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 30, 2006
6
0
i just acquired a new mbp (2,33ghz, 160gb, glossy)
i am wondering about two things:

Is it normal that i hear the hard drive making minor noise (like little "working" scratches)? It makes these noises even if i am doing no operation at all. A technician at the mac store told me it is because it is such a big hard drive but i never heard of something like that and i have quite some experience with computers...:(

Battery. the first thing i did when i got the computer is to callibrate the battery. When i am plugging the power cable out for five minutes, it takes 45 minutes to get back to 100%. And anyway it takes a huge amount of time to get back to full. Often it stays at 99% for 15 minutes (without that the little LED becomes green). I am used to other standards. Again... is this normal?:confused:

Third thing: a friend of mine came to my place yesterday. He packed his powerbook out and it struck me how small the transformator of his powercable is. Why did they get back to such huge blocks with the mbp?

I am looking forward to read you guys's answers.:)
 

kalun

macrumors regular
Sep 13, 2006
154
0
i just acquired a new mbp (2,33ghz, 160gb, glossy)
i am wondering about two things:

Is it normal that i hear the hard drive making minor noise (like little "working" scratches)? It makes these noises even if i am doing no operation at all. A technician at the mac store told me it is because it is such a big hard drive but i never heard of something like that and i have quite some experience with computers...:(

I am not sure about the battery, but about the hard drive issue, when you are doing "no operations", it does not mean the hard drive does not read and write data. A good example will be background applications, or preemptive paging (not sure if OS X employs it).

Now with that said, the staff's explaination of bigger harddrive makes scatching sound is just BS in my opinion.
 

wildmac

macrumors 65816
Jun 13, 2003
1,167
1
i just acquired a new mbp (2,33ghz, 160gb, glossy)
i am wondering about two things:

Is it normal that i hear the hard drive making minor noise (like little "working" scratches)? It makes these noises even if i am doing no operation at all. A technician at the mac store told me it is because it is such a big hard drive but i never heard of something like that and i have quite some experience with computers...:(

You might not be doing anything, but the computer might be. Spotlight could be running, or some other background task. You can look at the process manager and see what is going on. The tech's response was BS.
 

iñaki'sonMac'87

macrumors regular
Sep 6, 2006
124
0
Barcelona
Well, I can help you a little with the battery issue. First of all, you have to run 4-6 cicle to get the best performance of the battery, kind of get use it, then, I got that anoying steady 99% with the battery, what I do (maybe I got it wrong) is unplug it, wait to drain a little and then replug it, after that it reach the 100%.

About the HD noise, I don't have it, even though I'm a little deft ;)

have a good day:eek:
 

phuong

macrumors 6502a
Aug 16, 2006
523
0
about teh battery thing
i dont know about you but me, i never set it to show %
instead, i set it to show time
that way i know how much time i have left
usually, when fully charged, it gives me (estimately) 3:35hrs
(if you lick on the battery icon, it'll show you the % also, but dimmed)

when charging, it gives you how much time left to reach fully charged. i find that, when it charged 85%, it takes about 40-60 mins to reach 100%. and i suppose this is normal, since the charging state now is trickle current (according to the diagram here http://www.apple.com/batteries/)

i'm on C2D MBP
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.