Hard drive squealling on a dell. Causes?

I have a Dell Inspiron 600 and what I believe to be the hard drive is squealling every minute or so. Bad hard drive or something I can do? I am formating the drive again and installing a fresh copy of XP on it just for giggles, but it is screaming at me while I'm installing that. Probably time for a new drive?

Open up the case and see if you can verify that it's the hard drive making the noise. If it is, then yeah, it's probably time to start ordering a replacement. Is the computer still under warranty?

Not under warranty. How would I verify that it is the HD? I know how to take out the HD and all that jazz, but how to verify?

Thanks

You don't have to take anything out, just open up the case and see if you can pick out exactly where the noise is coming from. It could just be a fan.

Cool, I'll give it a try and see

PS If it is the fan, then what?

Get a new one. You should be able to enter your model number on Dell's support website and it will list all of the parts in your machine.

I had a fan die on my old Dell Dimension a few years ago. It was way past warranty, but I was able to pick up a fan on eBay for about $4.

Because Dude, it's a Dell.

It's most likely and fan or the CDROM is spinning up.