The clicking sound

[Loreno10]

It's laggy on my HD4000

So I'm not the only one - if it lags on hd 4000 it surely does on hd3000. I'm surprised that pkilfeather1 has it working so well. pkilfeather1 - you said that you use virtual machine. What program for that do you use? Parallels? I tried that and it's veery slow. I installed Win 8.1 with this.

EDIT:
Please don't forget about the main issue - the clicking sound form the HDD. HDAPM seems to not work - I don't see anything about it in the Console. Should I install it again?

 

[Loreno10]

Ok, I uninstalled HDAPM and installed it again, then I did the necessary modification in the plist file (changed max to 230), then I rebooted and here's all the lines I have about hdapm in the Console app:

02.11.2014 14:18:01,000 kernel[0]: hfs: mounted hdapm on device disk1s2
02.11.2014 14:18:01,665 mds[33]: (Volume.Normal:2464) volume:0x7fb821164200 ********** Bootstrapped Creating a default store:1 SpotLocnull) SpotVerLocnull) occlude:0 /Volumes/hdapm
02.11.2014 14:18:49,000 kernel[0]: hfs: unmount initiated on hdapm on device disk1s2
02.11.2014 14:20:02,000 kernel[0]: hfs: mounted hdapm on device disk1s2
02.11.2014 14:20:02,066 mds[33]: (Volume.Normal:2464) volume:0x7fada4848000 ********** Bootstrapped Creating a default store:1 SpotLocnull) SpotVerLocnull) occlude:0 /Volumes/hdapm
02.11.2014 14:20:35,332 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (hdapm) Unknown key for string: ServiceDescription
02.11.2014 14:20:35,464 hdapm[411]: disk0: TOSHIBA MK5061GSYN
02.11.2014 14:20:35,763 hdapm[411]: Set APM Level to 0xfe: Success
02.11.2014 14:22:39,066 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.xpc.launchd.domain.system) Caller specified a plist with bad ownership/permissions: path = /Library/LaunchDaemons/hdapm.plist, caller = launchd.1

I still hear the clicking.

 

[mr-andrek]

There's something wrong with permissions on the hdapm.plist file, try repairing permissions.
Also - you could try lower APM values. If you're 100% sure that on 230 it still clicks - set it to 220. You can do it by using

sudo hdapm 220

command, without restarting. Make sure to monitor the temperature and load cycle count value - check if it increases by 1 every time you hear the clicking sound. The change might be delayed though, HWMonitor checks for SMART info every now and then.

 

[Loreno10]

There's something wrong with permissions on the hdapm.plist file, try repairing permissions.
Also - you could try lower APM values. If you're 100% sure that on 230 it still clicks - set it to 220. You can do it by using

sudo hdapm 220

command, without restarting. Make sure to monitor the temperature and load cycle count value - check if it increases by 1 every time you hear the clicking sound. The change might be delayed though, HWMonitor checks for SMART info every now and then.

I repaired permissions using Disk Utility and it found some problems, but only connected with printers and display. I also ran Disk testing and it didn't find any problems.

I tried

sudo hdapm 220

, but I didn't notice any change, so I did

sudo hdapm 230

to get back to the previous setting.

I don't really see Load cycle count changing - it's 32213 in Raw Value column all the time.
Now, as I'm writing this post, I can tell that I hear silent clicking (around 10 clicks per second) and a little louder beeping (1 beep per 2 seconds). I can also tell that when I started writing this the temperature was 37*C and now it's 41*C. When I used Parallels (virtual Win8.1) 2 hours ago it jumped to 50*C and cooled down when I turned VM off.

 

[mr-andrek]

(...) Now, as I'm writing this post, I can tell that I hear silent clicking (around 10 clicks per second) (...)

10 per second?! This can't be the head parking. Too aggressive APM setting results in drive's head being parked once every ~10-20 seconds (from my experience). I suggest you run a thorough test of the hdd itself, there might be something wrong with it - but yet, if I recall correctly you said it happens only in OSX (Mavericks as well?) and not in Windows... Also - how loud is that sound? Head parking click is very noticable, you wouldn't need to keep your ear close to the drive to hear it.

 

[Loreno10]

10 per second?! This can't be the head parking. Too aggressive APM setting results in drive's head being parked once every ~10-20 seconds (from my experience). I suggest you run a thorough test of the hdd itself, there might be something wrong with it - but yet, if I recall correctly you said it happens only in OSX (Mavericks as well?) and not in Windows... Also - how loud is that sound? Head parking click is very noticable, you wouldn't need to keep your ear close to the drive to hear it.

I run HDTune (on Windows) test yesterday and there was no problem (but I'm not sure if that's the right kind of test). I think it did not happen in Mavericks, but I didn't use it as much as Yosemite (because I had other problems with it), so I'm not sure. In Windows it doesn't happen at all.

I don't know how to describe you the loudness of it. I can tell you that it's inaudible (or barely possible to hear) when the TV in the other room is playing, but the beeping is a little bit louder and I can hear it every few seconds (but the beeping doesn't appear all the time). This 'clicking' sounds like tapping a fingernail on the table (kind of, it's not exactly the same, more gentle i think )
I think that sometimes it's louder and sometimes more quiet, but it's hard to tell, because all the sounds around are changing and it might be wrong impression.

 

[mr-andrek]

(...)I don't know how to describe you the loudness of it(...)

I know the pain. I've helped my friend few months ago with her faulty hard drive and diagnosing the issue is indeed sometimes the hardest part of it I've used a tool called MHDD (http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/), which you use by booting up a CD with it. It is a very powerful tool but the interface might seem obscure at first.

The strangest part of your issue is that it is OS-specific. I'm not exactly sure what's causing this, I'd recommend to test the hard drive itself to eliminate the possibility of hardware being faulty. If everything's okay, I would test a Linux distribution if the problem occurs there as well. Perhaps you could give Mavericks a try as well? What was wrong with it in the first place?

I know this is rather a tedious task but if you want to deal with this issue...

 

[Loreno10]

I know the pain. I've helped my friend few months ago with her faulty hard drive and diagnosing the issue is indeed sometimes the hardest part of it I've used a tool called MHDD (http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/), which you use by booting up a CD with it. It is a very powerful tool but the interface might seem obscure at first.

The strangest part of your issue is that it is OS-specific. I'm not exactly sure what's causing this, I'd recommend to test the hard drive itself to eliminate the possibility of hardware being faulty. If everything's okay, I would test a Linux distribution if the problem occurs there as well. Perhaps you could give Mavericks a try as well? What was wrong with it in the first place?

I know this is rather a tedious task but if you want to deal with this issue...

I'll try running MHDD later. I can't run Mavericks, because it's not in the Appstore. I'll also run a LiveCD Mint or Ubuntu later.

The problem with Mavericks was that it was hanging one or two times every day (in many different situations) and I had many graphical artifacts - I could only move the cursor around, everything else got frozen. Actually in Yosemite I had one freeze too, but then I found a solution (which would probably help me in Mavericks too, but I didn't know about it that time) - I changed VRAM value from 384MB to 512MB (following Revogirls instruction from her blog) and it fixed the problem (at least I hope it did, but I think that otherwise my laptop would get frozen a few times already).

The temperature of the HDD got to 50*C (I was just using Safari) and now it fell to 49*C. I'll have to check if it gets so high on Windows.

 

[pkilfeather1]

So I'm not the only one - if it lags on hd 4000 it surely does on hd3000. I'm surprised that pkilfeather1 has it working so well. pkilfeather1 - you said that you use virtual machine. What program for that do you use? Parallels? I tried that and it's veery slow. I installed Win 8.1 with this.

EDIT:
Please don't forget about the main issue - the clicking sound form the HDD. HDAPM seems to not work - I don't see anything about it in the Console. Should I install it again?

Sorry to cause confusion - I just double checked and funnily enough App store resizing is very laggy, and chrome is pretty normal (a tiny bit stuttery but doesnt bother me). The reason I don't experience lag when enlarging windows is because I use HyperDock (a windows snap-to-maximise program) so I can just scroll up or drag the window up to maximise it. This is snappy. Maybe a suggestion to help you!

 

[Loreno10]

Sorry to cause confusion - I just double checked and funnily enough App store resizing is very laggy, and chrome is pretty normal (a tiny bit stuttery but doesnt bother me). The reason I don't experience lag when enlarging windows is because I use HyperDock (a windows snap-to-maximise program) so I can just scroll up or drag the window up to maximise it. This is snappy. Maybe a suggestion to help you!

I used HyperDocks for a moment, but I must tell you that it wasn't as snappy as in Windows systems. The other thing is that I have a couple of errors in the Console and I uninstalled HyperDock - maybe it caused those errors. It's a shame Apple didn't implement this feature into the OS - it's pretty hard to not be able to resize programs like on Windows. Looks like Windows OS is not as bad as some people try to convince it is.
What can you tell about your experience with virtual machines? Which software do you use for that and is it smooth?