Help - hard drive activity?

[gibbon]

I am new to macs having just acquired an iBook 14” 1.42Ghz 512mb after years of pc frustration and have a couple of questions:

1. There seems to be an awful lot of hard drive activity. With 512mb surely it should not be reading and writing to disk all the time? I am only using one app at a time, activity monitor says I have 200mb free yet disk is constantly being accessed. Noisily.
Since I got it I have updated all software, installed NeoOfficeJ and a few widgets (very cool!), loaded up my itunes library and a couple of photos, and repaired permissions (whatever that is). I also used the ibook to copy files from a pc to an external hard drive by connecting ibook-pc with ethernet cable and ibook-hard drive with usb2 (faster than doing it directly from old pc with usb1). I am connected to broadband and printer via airport express. Could any of these things have had an adverse effect?

2. I also have one dead pixel (red). After waiting so long for the ibook I am tempted to ignore it and not waste any more time. Do apple normally do anything about one pixel? I gave up after 30mins on hold to apple tech support. Is there anything I can do about it myself – I heard something about massaging but that sounds a bit iffy?

3. In typing this I have just noticed a slightly erratic soft electronic beep when typing – is this normal? (doesn't happen in NeoOfficeJ)

Thanks in advance for any help – I want to know whether this is something that I should try and sort out or just an irritating part of ibook ownership.

 

[robbieduncan]

1) Sounds unusual. Are you sure you don't have any background processes accessing the drive?

2) You are probably out of luck. 1 stuck (dead pixels are black, stuck are a single colour from red/blue/green) is considered "acceptable".

3) No idea. Is it the system beep telling you that the input is not valid?

 

[gibbon]

1) Sounds unusual. Are you sure you don't have any background processes accessing the drive?

Like what? how do i know what should be running and what shouldn't? Activity monitor shows these active processes:
Activity monitor
Safari
WindowServer
kernel_task
pmTool

problem is particularly noticable when browsing web.

keyboard sound doesn't sound like it would be a system beep. very quiet. thought it was just a squeaky keyboard at first. seems only to happen when typing in macrumors though!?

Thanks for reply.

 

[robbieduncan]

Well Safari (like most browsers on Windows as well as Mac OS) uses both RAM and the hard disk to cache downloaded files and cookies. I'd be surprised that it's that noticeable though!

 

[Bob_Barker]

With the hard drive, are you noticing a lot of lags in performance? If Activity Monitor reports a very large number of Page Outs, you may have an inadequate amount of memory or your memory may be faulty. If you have an Apple Store near by you could also bring it to the genius bar and ask them about all the noises. And if you are within 14 days, most places will allow you to exchange for a stuck pixel. Outside the 14 days, you need quite a few more before Apple will replace the panel.

 

[comic book guy]

2. I also have one dead pixel (red). After waiting so long for the ibook I am tempted to ignore it and not waste any more time. Do apple normally do anything about one pixel? I gave up after 30mins on hold to apple tech support. Is there anything I can do about it myself – I heard something about massaging but that sounds a bit iffy?

Seems you have have one stuck pixel:

Itasor has a solution which, acccording to him works in about 75% of the time.

http://itasor.com/pixelmurder.MP4

Just place it below the stuck Pixel and run it one night.

Other say gently rubbing (the dead pixel) may help.

You can also search the forum there have been several threads about that problem.

 

[gibbon]

Seems you have have one stuck pixel:

Itasor has a solution which, acccording to him works in about 75% of the time.

http://itasor.com/pixelmurder.MP4

Just place it below the stuck Pixel and run it one night.

Other say gently rubbing (the dead pixel) may help.

You can also search the forum there have been several threads about that problem.

Thanks - didn't work but sure looked funky!

The hard drive and heat problem seems to have calmed down a bit - could all that program installing have clutterred up the hard drive and it has now had a chance to optimise it? still more (and hotter) than I would expect though.

If I get a chance ill try to get through to apple again later on today. Are the guys you get through to actually ever any use?

 

[TBi]

My iBook and other iBooks i've looked at make hard drive noise when you press a key on the keyboard. It's quite annoying when you are writing a document. IT only happens in OSX :S

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

The hard drive and heat problem seems to have calmed down a bit - could all that program installing have clutterred up the hard drive and it has now had a chance to optimise it? still more (and hotter) than I would expect though.

Are you sure it wasn't just Spotlight indexing your HD? It should do that the first couple of hours after running Tiger for the first time. That would account for hard disk access and general slowdown...

When running lots of applications or even just Safari on a Flash intensive site (don't get me started on Safari and Flash...) the CPU (under your left ...) will become quite hot. With a tool like XRG you can monitor just how hot it gets.

Other than that enjoy your iBook, just remember to limit the number of active dashboard widgets and keep a bit of HD space available.

 

[gibbon]

Well, got through to apple today and:

dead pixel : tough luck

noisy/hot/busy hard drive: was told to verify disk but no problems found. Was then told to reset PRAM and then switch off, hold down shift+ctrl+alt and press the power botton then wait 5 seconds and boot up. Don't know what this last bit was supposed to do (part of the PRAM reset?). Was then told to wait a couple of days to see how things go. Am not entirely convinced that the person I was talking too really knew much. Seemed to read every thing she said to me.

Are you sure it wasn't just Spotlight indexing your HD? It should do that the first couple of hours after running Tiger for the first time. That would account for hard disk access and general slowdown...

Seems unlikely because it is still happening. If it was spotlight would that come up in activity monitor? Unfortunately I'm not clever enough to know what the things in activity monitor actually are and so don't know whether they should be there or not. Thought I had found a post about this a couple of days ago but can't find it now. Any links to such info?

When running lots of applications or even just Safari on a Flash intensive site (don't get me started on Safari and Flash...) the CPU (under your left ...) will become quite hot. With a tool like XRG you can monitor just how hot it gets.

Left certainly does get hot. Could fry an egg on that thing . Happens during just normal web browsing - this site for instance. Which reminds me - the strange quiet beep (hard drive noise?) whilst typing has miraculously disappeared!

Other than that enjoy your iBook, just remember to limit the number of active dashboard widgets and keep a bit of HD space available.

Thanks.

Am beginning to wonder if I am imagining things and my expectations are too high. (Although I am replacing an almost decade old toshiba laptop and was hoping the iBook would be a bit more refined, not less so!) Do other iBook owners have whirrs and clicks and just get on with life? I am worried that if not and something is up this will come back to haunt me later.