The bearings in your drive are starting to fail.  Make a backup.  Eventually it
will cease to spin up, though it may continue on for months.  Check Quantum's
web page.  It may possibly be under warranty.  Most drives have had 2-5 year
warrantees for several years.

Altaf Hussein wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> One of my machines is an old 386DX-40 running DOS 6.22 and Win 3.1. HD is a
> Quantum Fireball 520MB. RAM is 4MB.
>
> Recently the hard drive has began to give a high pitched sound when I
> switch on the computer and does not stop until the computer is switched
> off. As soon as the machine is off, it gets lower in sound and finally
> stops. I opened the casing and can definetly state that the sound is coming
> from the hard disk drive. I ran scandisk and Norton Diagnostics (NDD),
> NDIAGS and Defrag. All of them report that the drive is fine.
>
> I tried loosening the screws on either side of the drive (where it fits on
> to the casing) thinking that the screws were too tight, but to no avail.
>
> Any ideas on how to resolve this problem? Is it okay if I continue to use
> this drive?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Altaf Hussein
> [log in to unmask]