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

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could be...sometimes, you'll come across a compact mac, with a fan that is literally choked with dust...eye ball yer fan, and see if it's the original squirrel cage fan, ( which is noisy ) or the later SE'S, WITH THE box fans.

Also, floppy drives can make noize as well..

many early hard drives, fall victim to stick'em.....one possible solution is to pull the drive, shake it up, and see if that will 'free' it up..

chances are, you'll probably replace the hd, with something a tad bigger