I associate this sound with a motherboard heat warning, not a bad HD. My 
ASUS board makes this sound when the temperature exceds a value in the BIOS.

Venkat Viswanathan wrote:
> 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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