just because maxtor won't admit it, and because this was the only site that helped me, i'd like to keep the thread going with my experience.
i had the maxtor diamondmax plus 9 200 gb drive moved around outside of my computer for a few days ( because of the other drive, a maxtor sata 250 gb crashing and burning... ), and when i went to put it back in, i too got the singing/beeping every 15 seconds or so.. and you can feel the drive vibrating during the beeps. after reading about the tapping/hitting in this forum, i was able to get the drive to start spinning again by moderately tapping my knuckle against the side of the drive. with the power on, i kept the drive horizontal, and i tapped in a horizontal motion against the vertical side wall. as soon as it started spinning, the beeps went away and i moved the data to another drive.
my appreciative thanks to this site..
..george