[ScottW]

Well here's the latest.. I couldn't get the drive to spin up and I wasn't going to risk Maxtor refurbing the drive and leaving my data on it over $100, so I opened the drive up myself in search of the source of the beeps.

There is a small rectangular plastic box with clear sides, that contains hundreds of what appear to be tiny metal beads, with a paper membrane on the top of the box. The sound appeared to be coming from that box. The box seems to be some kind of an air filter, since the box is connected to the underside of the drive through a tube.

The box itself:


The airhole on the controller side of the drive:


The position of the box in the drive enclosure:


I removed the box from the drive and got it to spin up and all seems fine, though now I don't trust the drive at all. I put the box back in place (it's just held down by some glue/sticky junk) and now it still spins up fine. I can't RMA the drive now that I opened it up but I guess I'll use it as a scratch/temp disk .