The Sounds of Failing Hard Drives
zzptichka sends along a link to recordings of typical sounds from 35 different failing and dying hard drives. The host of these sounds, Datacent, is in the business of data recovery, so presumably they have heard it all.
Radiohead's Nude, done with old hard drives and other hardware. Even if you're not a fan of Radiohead, I think it's worth a watch just to see the setup in action.
(And don't worry, only the hard drives get "nude", so it's SFW.)
Hello hard drive, my old friend.
I've come to boot you up again,
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of failure.
In restless dreams I walked alone.
Narrow halls of servers drone
neath the halo of an office lamp.
I lay my forehead gently in my hand
When my ears were stabbed by the grinding of
A faulty drive
That split the night
And touched the sound of failure.