Found this very interesting article about the sounds made by a failing hard drive. If I had a nickel for the times I have heard most of these (and yes… the Maxtor sounds are the most common. This is why I use Maxtor hard drives as door stops only).

Folks, if you care, it is a good thing to get a quiet moment, press your ear to your computer, reboot, and listen to the drives spin up. It may tell you a lot.

This site contains sound samples of various brands of hard drives in many different states of failure or near failure. Before you test your own computer, check out this site.

http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

And like Todd Rundgren said, “Now, if ya have a pair of headphones ya better get’m out and get’m cranked up, cause they’re really gonna help ya on this one…” The samples on this site are a bit hard to hear on external speakers.

I may even send you a 10 Gig Maxtor hard drive (probably not functioning) if you can make a hit song out of the sounds!  HAHA! (Nobukazu Takemura is ineligible for this contest!)