It also should be pulling in rocks that get too close, gravitationally pulverising them into a thin disc that gradually and continually dopes the remnant atmosphere with silicon.
Heavy HDD use gave us 40dB, while accessing HDD and spinning up a Blu-ray took this to a deafening 50dBA. Luckily, once a disc was loaded and running, sounds from the drive ceased almost completely and overall system noise remained close to the idle level while actually playing a movie -- the Samsung SH-123L was impressive in that respect.