Beep goes the iMac.

January 11, 2007 8:04 AM

What is that "return from sleep" beep my iMac makes, and why does it do it randomly?

Why my iMac comes out of sleep, it gives a faint "beep" sound. This may or may not be normal. When the computer is idle (and not asleep), it will make the sound, too. Randomly. I think it will even do it when the hard drive is spun down.

It's driving us a little nuts. Please save us. If needed I can record the sound.

20" Intel Core Duo 2.0, all the latest updates. I've checked the energy saver options, haven't seen anything to do with this. Google and Apple discussions have failed me so far as well.

posted by starman to computers & internet (8 comments total)

By the way, it's coming from the innards, not the speakers.
posted by starman at 8:05 AM on January 11, 2007

Is there an OSX equivalent of a system or event log? If so, do the beeps correlate to a certain type of system-level event? Mobo speaker beeps usually reflect low-level system events (processor speed, ACPI wake events, etc) so I'd be looking for something of that nature.
posted by datacenter refugee at 8:15 AM on January 11, 2007

I had a similar problem with my PowerBook and it was a bad hard drive. At the time I definitely considered the sound to be a "faint beep" but the technicians said it was actually a very short whine. They replaced the drive with a different brand and were a little condescending about explaining how the sound was "well within tolerances" and "most people aren't bothered by it."

(Of course, this doesn't explain it if you say it does it when the hard drive is spun down. But I do know that I would definitely at least hear the sound at night when my computer was idle, thanks to Spotlight indexing and other processes that run at odd hours.)
posted by bcwinters at 10:49 AM on January 11, 2007

Hm.. I'll put the hard drive sleep to a low timer, see if I still hear it.
posted by starman at 11:10 AM on January 11, 2007

Opps, no option for hard drive sleep timer length. You know, it is kind of a "chime" coming from the logic board, not the hard drive if I had to guess.
posted by starman at 11:14 AM on January 11, 2007

I'll keep talking to myself: On further inspection it might be the hard drive. It seems to beep/chime whenever it (the hard drive) comes out of sleep mode... I think. Anyone else encounter this?
posted by starman at 1:05 PM on January 11, 2007

If it's the sound I think you mean, it's the drive, I think. It sort of makes a faint "brrrrrrt" sound just before the hard drive starts whirring, right?

I get it on my MacBook whenever the drive comes back from being spun down. I really don't think you can do anything to stop it.
posted by bink at 2:07 PM on January 11, 2007

I think that's the sound. Maybe it's nothing to worry about then.
posted by starman at 3:34 PM on January 11, 2007