…should be an olympic sport. I think when your floppy drive dies for no reason (emitting a throaty “bwaaaaaaa” sound that’s loud enough to wake your roommate through two closed doors), the dBA should be rated and placed in global competition, with medals distributed to the winners.
The problem, however, is that my floppy dying somehow took my whole IO system with it, giving me nice “hda: DMA timeout error” messages. For a short while, I was terrified that my hda drive (in which Linux lives) had died, though fortunately that wasn’t the problem, it turned out to be the floppy. A reboot fixed the DMA timeout problem, but started the buzz-saw noises. I guess I’m now officially 3.5″ disk-less. [Insert juvenile snickering here.]
James Cape 
And you’re going to miss your 3.5″ floppy drive because…?
I’ve not had one for about two years now, haven’t missed it once. They’re best consigned to the bin. BEFORE they make that grinding noise.
I went one better with mine, short-circuited it and it got welded to the power supply cable. Lots of smoke and a really nasty smell too.