Hitachi has a knowledge base page that has real recordings of disk drives failing …
Some of the sounds do indeed appear to have been recorded in one of the rings of hell. Over at Gizmodo they have a Hard Drive Dying Dance Track Contest and you can hear some of the entries over at Odeo. I quite like “Hit Achi” and as someone pointed out, “ballad of broke disk dreams” sounds somewhat like the sound track from Bladerunner.
