My six year old MAXTOR QUANTUM FIREBALL 4GIG has stated making an "English siren" sort of noise during the entire "post" process/avg boot sector virus scan and stops the moment win 98 se splash screen appears. 

after this there is no problem and the o/s loads fine. this happens every time i boot up cold or restart.

my mobo is S.M.A.R.T capable and in fact this is shown during "post".

i have got a S.M.A.R.T warning when i connected a "known" bad hdd just to verify .

any ideas what could be wrong? this has started just recently and as usual i failed to note the exact date/time just to check if i had done anything prior to this which could have caused this.

TIA and good day and congrats. on a very smooth transition to a new server.

--Venkat

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