Something's strange; I just now turned the SE on to be sure that it still works the same--and the malfunctioning Miniscribe is sitting on the table next to the SE--and yet the SE is still making the noise that I had attributed to the hard drive. It sounds like there's friction--what else in an SE moves physically, apart from the hard drive? Could it be a fan in need of a bit of cleaning?

-Apostrophe