My hard drive on the way out the door?

[Jayce]

I have 3 drives in my computer.

WD SATA 250 gig - A
WD SATA 250 gig - B
Maxtor IDE 200 gig - C

Drive A contains Linux/Windows.
Drive B contains a home directory backup of drive A.
Drive C also contains a home directory backup of drive A.

The sound is similar to a wire just slightly touching the fins of a fan as it spins. I first thought that was it, but no fans are being touched by wires. I figured I'd start with drive B. I unplugged it, booted up, no sound. I figured oh that's it. Out of curiosity I plug B back in, boot up, no sound. For the next 3-4 hours I was on the computer with no sound from the hard drives (that I suspect anyway).

I wake up, and there it is.

All drives are under warranty and I have 3 full backups (4 if you include all of the blank DVD's I put all my pictures and stuff on) so I'm not going to bug out if a drive goes down. But I'm going to school for this and although I assume it's the HDD, I don't understand why it would seem better for a few hours by being shut off for 9 seconds? Could it even be that? Maybe it's something else... *shrug*