[Techtalk] periodic loud hard drive noise--solved

[Carla Schroder]

OK, I know I've nattered on way too long about this, violating my own rule 
of 'one test is better than a thousand theories.' 

The noisy drive is the old 20GB IDE drive; I couldn't shut down the PC and 
disconnect the disk until today. smartctl is supported on this disk, though 
not fully, and the only error it reported was

Power_On_Seconds  FAILING_NOW 40531h+24m+05s

That doesn't mean the drive is failing, it means it has exceeded the value set 
by the manufacturer for the expected lifetime of the disk. Grinding noises 
are bad no matter what smartctl reports, so it now resides in the 
stuff-to-shoot bucket.

It was good for getting useful suggestions, thanks everyone!

Carla

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