Many thanks to Hugh Vandervoort,John Sproule, Robert Citkowitz for their replies.

(1)the siren sound IS coming from the hdd. in fact the chassis speaker is disconnected but i get the "beep" sound during post from the hdd.

(2) I too have an asus mobo but do not think the problem is heat related because the siren starts immediately after power up and continues during post and stops immediately after the win 98 se splash screen appears. after that all normal and o/s loads fine and the system stays stable 24 hrs.

(3) just to test, i slaved a known bad hdd:-

S.M.A.R.T showed the condition as poor and "imminent failure expected..."

(1) downloaded "passmark disk check up" as suggested by Robert Citkowitz and the reults for the hdd sounding the siren:-

 Drive 0  SMART enabled



IDE REGISTERS:

Features: 0x0   Sector Count: 0x0  Sector Number: 0x1 

Cylinder Low: 0x0  Cylinder High: 0x0  Drive Head: 0xA0 

Command: 0x50



DRIVE INFORMATION:

Serial Number: 824912328084

FirmWare Rev: A5U.1200

Model Number: QUANTUM FIREBALL CR4.3A

Cylinders: 14848  Heads: 9   Sectors per track: 63

Cur Cyls: 14848  Cur Heads: 9   Cur Sectors/Track: 63

Bytes per track: 32256  Bytes per sector: 512

Gen Config: 1114  Buffer Type: 3   Buffer Size: 836

Vendor Unique: 0 0 5154  More Vendor Unique: 0x8010

ECC Size: 4   Double Word IO: 0  Capabilities: 3840

PIO Timing: 512  DMA Timing: 512  BS: 7

Current Sector Capacity: 8418816  Total Addressable Sectors: 8418816

Mult. Sector Stuff: 272  Single Word DMA: 0  Multi Word DMA: 7



SMART ATTRIBUTES:

ID Description                         Raw Value Status  Value  Worst Threshold

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 Raw Read Error Rate                   0    OK       100   253   20

3 Spin Up Time                          2058ms OK       84   84   20

4 Start/Stop Count                      14156 OK       79   79   8

5 Reallocated Sector Count              0    OK       100   100   20

7 Seek Error Rate                       0    OK       100   100   23

9 Power On Time                         9994 OK       85   85   1

B Calibration Retry Count               0    OK       100   100   20

C Power Cycle Count                     13975 OK       79   79   8

D (Unknown attribute)                   0    OK       100   100   23

C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Count             478  OK       1   1   0

C6 Offline Scan Incorrect. Sector Count  0    OK       100   253   0

the siren still continues and the duration is 3 times the normal because of the bad hdd having win xp pro which i think is also being checked during the boot process.

any input will be gratefully acknowleged. otherwise i will just leave it as it is i suppose and remove the slave.

TIA---Venkat

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