I recently swapped out my old motherboard (a giga-byte rvxvp) for a Soyo K600 Dragon Plus. The swap went fine except now it seems I hear when data loads from my 240GB hardrive. I have two HD on my primary IDE and a DVD on my secondary IDE. Win XP is showing the two HD's as UDMA 4 and 5. My old drive is the UDMA 4 with the newer wd 240GB hd being the UDMA 5. I defragmented a few of the partitions but still seemingly hear when data loads. I'm sure most of you encounter this noise - it sounds like data loading from the computer case. Is this normal? I don't remember hearing it as clear as I do now.

How long have you had the 240 GB drive? When you say you can hear data loading, it is an unpleasant sound or is it a more audible spinning of the drive heads? Drives that produce alot of noise can be indicative of a failing drive but that may not be the case. Can you hear this noise ALL of the time? You may not have a problem at all...but try running a third party disk utility and do a thorough check for possible hard drive failure. Raymond Mackie Technical Support Mgr. rmackie@microtailors.com www.microtailors.com "Custom computers and prices tailored to fit you"

Is the new fan quieter than the old? Perhaps the noise has always been there but now you can make it out.

Well the noise is always there. Just reminds me of crunching sound. Like loading files. The new fan is definitely quieter. Maybe it was always there. It's just very obvious this time and it makes me feel like programs are taking longer to load even though that really may not be the case.