My technical level:
This question is about a iMac G4 15" Flat-Panel 1Gb that I purchased in Feb 2002. I'm a SW Engineer by degree and trade. I have some experience with hardware and can find my way around an open computer, but don't know the nuts and bolts about firmware and chipsets. I tend to be asked troubleshooting tips for both PC and Mac OS-related or software issues.
Detailed Question:
While I had my iMac open to replace a dead superdrive, I swapped the original Seagate 60Gb hard drive with a Maxtor 300Gb (xlr8yourmac indicated that most iMacs had large drive support, so I took a chance). I then, after quite a bit of verification, found out that my iMac does not have large drive support. It looks like the only way I can get large drive support is to upgrade the ATA controller which looks like it means upgrading the motherboard [too expensive!]. However, since I bought the drive from TigerDirect for a price that will be lower than most 128Gb drives (after rebate), I'd like to keep the drive.
So I then booted from a backup on an external firewire enclosure, and formatted the 300Gb with Disk Utility. Disk Utility only saw it as a 128Gb drive, so it created a 128Gb boot partition. Again, I can live with this. BTW: I'm considering using the driver on speedtools.com to access the remaining space, but haven't decided on that.
My problem is that the drive is much louder than my old drive, or even the Maxtor OneTouch 200Gb external enclosure that I booted from. Due to the noise, I strongly suspect the 300Gb drive may be bad. Since I've installed the drive, I've also had iCal crash for the first time ever and a couple of Safari crashes that are usually more infrequent.
I could maybe understand the noise since it is a larger and faster drive.
Another reason could be that the original 60Gb drive was all-but 2Gb full. I've read that in cases like this, the OS X auto-defrag stops. Since I'm on a larger drive, maybe the noise I hear is OS X doing auto-defrag when I access files. BTW: The noise I hear only occurs during access, and sounds like it is louder when accessing things that haven't been accessed in a while. When using Safari to browse the internet, the noise happens every time a new page is loaded (perhaps from disk writes due to caching?).
The following is a link to a audio capture of the noise. I captured it using the iMac's internal mic on its flat-panel. The steady hum in the background is the iMac fan and system noise. The clicking is the hard drive. To get the noise, I quickly opened about a dozen applications then started the recording.
http://homepage.mac.com/jtklinger/.Public/HardDriveClicking.aif
Thanks for your help.
This question is about a iMac G4 15" Flat-Panel 1Gb that I purchased in Feb 2002. I'm a SW Engineer by degree and trade. I have some experience with hardware and can find my way around an open computer, but don't know the nuts and bolts about firmware and chipsets. I tend to be asked troubleshooting tips for both PC and Mac OS-related or software issues.
Detailed Question:
While I had my iMac open to replace a dead superdrive, I swapped the original Seagate 60Gb hard drive with a Maxtor 300Gb (xlr8yourmac indicated that most iMacs had large drive support, so I took a chance). I then, after quite a bit of verification, found out that my iMac does not have large drive support. It looks like the only way I can get large drive support is to upgrade the ATA controller which looks like it means upgrading the motherboard [too expensive!]. However, since I bought the drive from TigerDirect for a price that will be lower than most 128Gb drives (after rebate), I'd like to keep the drive.
So I then booted from a backup on an external firewire enclosure, and formatted the 300Gb with Disk Utility. Disk Utility only saw it as a 128Gb drive, so it created a 128Gb boot partition. Again, I can live with this. BTW: I'm considering using the driver on speedtools.com to access the remaining space, but haven't decided on that.
My problem is that the drive is much louder than my old drive, or even the Maxtor OneTouch 200Gb external enclosure that I booted from. Due to the noise, I strongly suspect the 300Gb drive may be bad. Since I've installed the drive, I've also had iCal crash for the first time ever and a couple of Safari crashes that are usually more infrequent.
I could maybe understand the noise since it is a larger and faster drive.
Another reason could be that the original 60Gb drive was all-but 2Gb full. I've read that in cases like this, the OS X auto-defrag stops. Since I'm on a larger drive, maybe the noise I hear is OS X doing auto-defrag when I access files. BTW: The noise I hear only occurs during access, and sounds like it is louder when accessing things that haven't been accessed in a while. When using Safari to browse the internet, the noise happens every time a new page is loaded (perhaps from disk writes due to caching?).
The following is a link to a audio capture of the noise. I captured it using the iMac's internal mic on its flat-panel. The steady hum in the background is the iMac fan and system noise. The clicking is the hard drive. To get the noise, I quickly opened about a dozen applications then started the recording.
http://homepage.mac.com/jtklinger/.Public/HardDriveClicking.aif
Thanks for your help.
