[P1] clicking sound on iBook

Tue Apr 15 11:13:27 PDT 2003

Personally, I am not sure what type of sound that you have been hearing, but I have been tracking a similar problem for quite some time.

My iBook is a Dual USB 600MHz model. I purchased it at the end of the year, right before the newer models came out at MacWorld. After about 6 to 8 months, I noticed two problems, one was that the display backlight would go out, the other was that I heard a sound sounding like the hard drive head crashing into the disk. At first, I thought that there might be a system software problem that was causing both the problems. When I would wipe the drive and reinstall software, it would seem like the problems would go away AND that the problems seemed to happen more in OSX than in OS9 (of course, I ran OSX about 80% of the time, so I really couldn't be sure of performance issues in OS9). Of course, the major reason why I could never do a thorough job of troubleshooting was because I was using the computer every day and couldn't afford a large amount of downtime. Also, the computer would usually fail at times that were inconvenient to call Apple Service, and it was usually easier to wipe my drives and reinstall software than having to sit on hold and work through an issue with an Apple Repair Tech.

As I neared the end of my warranty period, my backlight issue seemed to get worse and I could get it to work intermittently by moving the lid around. I figured that it was mostly a hardware issue. I had been intending to get AppleCare anyway (the absolutely BEST investment for anyone with a portable Mac), so I signed up and then while still in the warranty period, got Apple to agree to a hardware repair.

When I got it back, I realized that I hadn't mentioned the clicking drive issues that I had been working around for months. Now, I should mention that the clicking sound was accompanied by the spinning rainbow disk and would end up with a file that I couldn't open, even after force quitting/rebooting. With both a portable and a home computer and my data duplicated in two places, I never really had a issue with data loss in these situations or after wiping drives. Still, the clicking problem continued, even when I ran the iBook in FW disk mode. Finally deciding that I needed to deal with the problem, I contacted AppleCare specifically about the clicking problem. Working through resets, wiping PRAM, removing RAM, etc (since I am a long time-almost 20 year- Mac user, these were all things that I had done in the past to try to solve the problem. After spending a good part of time on the line with an AppleCare Rep, it was determined that I should try wiping the drive one more time and call back in when the problem reoccurred.

Well, over the next two months, I would get the clicking sound and the spinning rainbow, but eventually files would open or copy. I would get some good system hangs that would require reboots, but again, it would happen at "inconvenient" times, so that I wasn't inclined to call AppleCare. Finally, after installing the OS10.2.5 update with Software Update, the computer would hang after booting but before the desktop would display. When I tried to copy data using FW disk mode, it would actually hang my desktop machine that I was copying to.

Yesterday, I finally decided that I really needed to deal with the problem. I called in and spent about 1 hour on the phone with the tech, trying out multiple things. Finally, he determined that the problem was data corruption on my drive that was causing the head to continually search, making the clicking sound. I was skeptical, since I had had almost no data corruption errors (with similar files) on any of my other Macs, but I was willing to work through the problem. He still believed that there was no hardware problem and that the solution was to reinstall system software. He told me to boot OSX in safe mode to get the data off the drive, then low level format the drive by writing zeros and running a disk test on an empty drive.

Overnight, I did exactly as he said. Writing zeros to the drive took at least a couple of hours. When I ran the disk check in the disk utility app, sure enough it crashed with unrecoverable errors after about 15 minutes. Just to double check, I wrote zeros to the drive again, and had the disk check crash again. This morning, I called in again to report my findings, and within a few minutes, had an Apple Tech sending me out a box for hardware repair.

In conclusion, it's not easy to trouble shoot issues like this, with intermittent hardware. Too often, it is just too time consuming to go through all of the steps to eliminate all the variables, especially software ones. While I understand Apple's position (and don't blame them at all), it's still frustrating that an engineer and an Apple computing veteran like me has to go through so many steps to get Apple Care to send an RMA for a hardware problem. It really requires a lot of persistence on the owner's part and follow through. oth, I really do appreciate the fact that Apple does a great job of tracking these issues over a long period of time, and that once a hardware problem is acknowledged, they are amazingly quick to deal with it with the minimum of inconvenience to the enduser.

As far as the disk issues, I had heard murmurs about the drives in some of the earlier iBooks, so that added to my suspicions. The file system has been incredibly stable on the other Macs that I own (another 4 or 5 that I use a lot), so I was also suspicious of data corruption problems on the portable. With a greater reliance on virtual memory, the hard drives are having to work harder in OSX, especially in portables where they are using smaller, lower voltage drives. If you are hearing clicking and getting data corruption, take the time to fully test your drive by formatting, zeroing and running disk test. Most all, if you are having any continual problems, be persistent in getting Apple Repair techs to work through them with you.
On Sunday, April 13, 2003, at 03:38PM, Ron Reames <rreames at cableone.net> wrote:

>Yep, I do. I'm going to detail this a little more and after I talk to 
>them I'll report back.
>On Sunday, April 13, 2003, at 03:44  PM, Gary D. Adams wrote:
>
>> Do you have Applecare?