Just to go back to the original problem, I assumed it was an HD failing because one of them made that noise when the heads go from one end to another while booting. Two identical same age SATA drives. But it's still working ok.
Sometimes when booting it appears to constantly poll the CD drives and makes that noise - sometimes not. But always boots normally.
If the noise is from the drive then you do need to replace it ASAP. It may continue to work for years but it probably wont.
Just make a backup to five or six distributed VTLs made by different manufacturers and run by different people in different parts of the world and you will probably be OK. 8-)
Oh BTW, copy it to local storage too as it can be a real pain restoring the stuff over ADSL or a modem.
Some drives go through a periodic thermal recalibration cycle, and can make quite alarming noises as they bounce the heads around - it's possible that's all you were hearing.
Querying the drive via SMART is perhaps the best thing you can do - the logs should show if the drive has encountered an error or not.
cheers
Jules
Drives doing recalibration don't usually make extra noise. Modern ones don't do it the same way. It used to produce delays.. hence the AV drives that were sold (at a premium) that didn't do the recalibration all in one go.
It may not actually get read errors, but it probably gets seek errors.
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