my pump is making a funny noise

i'm new here and know very little about pool equipment. I have an inground gunite pool with spa that was built 10 yrs ago. I'm recently divorced and trying to take care of the pool, so I'm here to educate myself on the workings of the equipment etc. I had a service over the summer and had them replace the filters. About a week ago, I woke to a whining noise that was coming from my pump. I turned it off and cleaned all the cleanable places, vac hose filter, skimmer basket, pump basket, vac bag. I think that's all, I didn't clean the filters because they had just been changed less than a month ago. I turned the pump back on and it still made the same noise so I turned it off again. The husband of a friend of mine used to build pools so he came over and listened, he said it sounded like the bearings in the motor were going out. he told me I needed a new motor and should get the pump too. He told me I could still run it an hour per day to keep the pool clean. I have been running it, this is day 3 and I noticed the vac wasn't moving. I cleaned everything out again and then it moved too fast, even blew the hose out of the wall. so I adjusted the pressure release on the wall connector and it's moving but climbing and not reversing. Is all this related? Does it sound like it could be something besides the motor/pump? if it is the motor, is it ok to run it while it sounds like that and I'm saving to get a new motor/pump assembly? sorry this is so long, but I'm a little overwhelmed being absolutely in the dark about mechanical things and I'll try to keep my questions shorter and more to the point in the future. Thanks

Bearing failure often makes pump motors whine, but there can be other reasons as well. If you can take a short video with sound, and post it, we may be able to ID it from sound alone. Pump motors often run a long time with bad bearings, but if you start and stop your pump (saves electricity), you may find it get's 'stuck' and won't restart.

. . . HOWEVER . . . if you're not mechanical, the best option is to try to have a good pool tech check out your pool, help you make decisions about what to fix and what to postpone. Trouble shooting mechanical pool problems over the Internet is hard, even with mechanically inclined pool owners. It's really, really hard with pool owners who are not.

But, if you want more help, take photos of your pool and equipment, and post them with Webshots, Flickr, Picasa or some other service, and then post the links here. We can be MUCH more helpful if we can see what you have.