[Dal]

Mike,

IS the noise bad when your playing a backup or an original???

If its a backup then you may find that its the media you are using. Verbatim Datalife Plus is the media to use for backups.

What i would say though is that the CDROM drive does make a lot of noise anyway in some games, NHL2002 for example is very CDROM happy.

Get some of the media i mentioned above and give it another go, what game is it thats giving you all this trouble/worry???

And to finish off, i dont see any reason why playing backups using decent media should shorten the life of your PS2. I have a chipped PS1 its 5 years old now and still boot backups fine!!!

Goodluck

Dal