I have a 1 week old iMac i7 and have noticed that my hard drive will run intermittently almost every two seconds when I am not doing anything. This is my first Mac, and I do not know how to look to see if something is running causing this to happen. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
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Hard drive runs intermittently
- Thread starter vidoc2
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You'll need to be more specific. Does the hard drive make a noise or do you get the multicolored beachball icon instead of your mouse cursor? Does the computer actually freeze or hang when you experience the hard drive "running"?
it's probably done doing this but a new OS X install will index the contents of the drive. Also any one of your programs may be running quietly in the background checking for updates. Normally you can't even hear the hdd on iMacs but I guess it depends on who made the drive.
Hmm, I know that the hard drives in Mac laptops sometimes make noise due to the sudden motion sensor that parks the drive heads when it senses movement, but I can't think of any reason why your iMac's hard drive would be making noise that frequently. You can try running Disk Utility's Verify Disk to see if it finds anything out of the ordinary. Even if it doesn't find anything wrong, and if you are still concerned about the noise that its making, taking it into an Apple authorized service provider or retail location will be your best bet.
Thank you for all the info. I have been away from my iMac for a few days, and after a few hours the hard drive does not seem to be running every two seconds like it did earlier today when I turned on my computer. I will continue to monitor and if it continues I'll bring it in to be looked at. I ran disk utility and aside from some permission differences, is said my drive was ok.
Better make sure you have any critical data backed up.
My iMac was making the same noises and the hard drive has just failed in it. (It's less than three months old!
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All of the new iMacs do this. Search these forums for "iMac Noisy Hard Drive" and you'll find a ton of threads about it. Mine does as well. It's just a case where the hard drive is writing small bits of data from time to time like all computers do, but the hard drives in the iMac just seem to be a bit more audible than others. Nothing is wrong with your iMac.