[soundtest]

No, performance wasn't affected at all. I'm pretty sure it's not the fan because it's so fucking loud there's no way the fan motor could make such a noise...

I tried a scan and it found no problems, then (for the first time since I got this thing) I decided to defrag... since the defrag it has not been noisy at all. Problem appears to be solved.... maybe it's a certain area of the disk being accessed that causes it to go nuts and defragging moved files being used away from that area? Is that even possible?