Disk drive very loud as it spins

My disk drive just started making a very loud noise as it spins, kind of like the disk is spinning against something. I tried several disks and all have the same problem. Also the rpms slow and speed up very irregularly. My macbook is a few years old, so that may be the problem, but I've never heard this noise before.

Any suggestions?

From your description, it sounds as if the drive may be defective and possibly could fail at any time. It might be a good idea not to attempt to read or write to media that you have. You probably should replace the drive.

OWC has replacement drives and instructions for removing and installing.

Link

Regards.

replacement

Thanks! I kind of figured that since the Macbook was purchased in 2006, but I thought I would check just in case.

For any one else researching a similar disk drive problem, I did a little searching on ebay and found I could get an external disk drive for under $50 that is compatible with my Macbook. This (for us at least) is a nice alternative to replacing the internal optical drive which is considerably more expensive.
A little inconvenient, yes, but great for an older laptop that's not worth spendy repairs and that we're not ready to upgrade yet.

If you don't have a back up, now would be a good time to get that full back up before you have a complete failure.