Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Mon 3rd Mar 2003 20:39 UTC
OSNews featured two reviews of the new 12" Powerbook from Apple last month. Using a machine and more fairly evaluating it, is a continuous process, so when new facts emerge, we should be reporting them back. So, what I discovered this weekend is that my 12" Powerbook doesn't like... the mountains. Read on, it is an interesting issue. Update: The issue is now logged at Apple's tech support db.
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I had pretty much exactly the same problem with an IBM Thinkpad, I'm not sure what hard disk was in it (I assume it would be an IBM?).
The hard disk made the clonk-clonk noise you describe and sometimes a grating noise too. Windows 2000 would freeze up for a second or two while the hard disk was making the noises, so that isn't an OS X problem. The noises stopped when I wasn't using it at a high altitude and tests didn't show any faults. But after less than a month of use the drive failed totally and had to be replaced. I assumed the disk was already faulty and the extra strain of working at high altitude simply made it fail sooner.
An office I worked at bought a number of desktop computers (mainly quite low end workstations, with a couple of faster PCs for graphics) fitted with a bad batch of the rather infamous IBM 75GXP hard disks. They had nearly all failed within 6 months, but ones in the faster (and hotter) PCs started showing problems (clicking and bad sectors) after only a couple of weeks. Obviously all the drives had the fault that made them die, but only the ones running at a higher temperature showed symptoms early on.
If I was you, I'd make sure that you backup data very often and be prepared for the drive to fail without warning. Also, I'm sure there are other Powerbook users using them at similar altitudes, are other people having this problem? If they aren't, then I would certainly suspect a bad hard disk rather than a general problem.