Ibook making car alarm noise

Hi everyone --
This topic was actually discussed in a thread that was last posted to in May (I'm including a link), but I am reviving it because I am having a problem similar to that of the original poster. In short -- last night my ibook started making a noise like a car alarm -- three very soft noises followed by three louder ones. I shut it down by pushing the power key for 10 seconds and the alarm noise stopped and I reset the memory and rebuilt the desktop but when I started up again, I got the alarm noise plus a flashing question mark on the start up screen.
The posters on the earlier thread seemed to suggest that this was a sign of imminent HDD failure (does this mean your hard drive?) and my question is -- is this true? Has anybody else had a similar experience.
I should say that I'm running OSX 10.1.something on the ibook and it has the classic environment as well.
Thanks!
Gina
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1251153

Hi Gina,
In the thread that you have referenced, we are still waiting on the results of the HDD (Hard Disk Drive) autopsy to be performed by the OP (Original Poster).
While we are awaiting those results, all we have to go by are the comments made by the OP and the corroborating post by user DSWright, in that the alarm noise is associated with the failure of the hard drive, as indicated by the S.M.A.R.T. status and the obvious failure of the OP's HDD, plus the nonoccurrence of the noise subsequent to the HDD being replaced.
At this stage, all we can say is that the noise provides strongly circumstantial evidence of imminent HDD failure.
If I was in your situation, I would take this as being symptomatic of HDD failure, and back up your important files.
I hope that Andrew will forgive a little Aussie humour when I say that, this is the 'recession' that Hass had to have!
Cheers.

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