[Tiny-E]

I think my hard drive is aobut to fail. my ti powerbook (almost 3 years old now without much problems) has been freezing up on me lately (see OSX forums section for my post there) and jus starting last night, the computer has been making this clicking sound while the computer freezes. Goes on for 10 sec to a min then the applications continue working, or sometimes, it won't stop clicking and I have to manually reboot the computer.

I've been told on the forums page that my hard drive is most likely going to fail. So, I copied my docs, music and photos to my external lacie harddrive. Now what? Do I just wait for the hard drive to fail? What then?

Do I have to go buy a new hard drive? Can this be fixed using Disk Warrior (whatever that is, I'm not sure)?

I love my mac and the thought of it not working when I get back home tonight is very very depressing!

[f1000]

You should get that hard drive backed up and replaced ASAP. Do as others have already told you and backup your essential files. Do not to "write" to the drive or move or delete any files until you have backed up your important data. The mere act of trashing a file can be the proverbial feather that breaks your drive's back.

If your drive is damaged, your backed up data might be corrupt, so double-check your backed up data before you start running any disk utilities on your HD.

It's foolhardy and counterproductive to continue using a known flakey hard drive. Bite the bullet and buy a replacement.

[Tiny-E]

Is there a way to test my hard drive and to see if it's going to fail?

Is it difficult to replace hard drives? How much does it usually cost?

[f1000]

Originally posted by Tiny-E:
Is there a way to test my hard drive and to see if it's going to fail?

If your hard drive is making unusual noises and you're simultaneously experiencing system problems, then I would ignore any utility that claims your drive is OK. S.M.A.R.T. is supposed to warn you of impending drive failures, but I've had two drives fail on me before S.M.A.R.T. reported any problems (one of the drives was in an external Firewire enclosure, so S.M.A.R.T. wouldn't have warned me anyway). In fact, S.M.A.R.T. reported problems only after catastrophic failure had already occurred.

If you've backed up your data, try verifying your drive using Apple's Disk Utility. If your drive checks out with Apple's Disk Utility, then run DiskWarrior for a second opinion. I know from experience that Apple's Disk Utility misses S.M.A.R.T. warnings that DiskWarrior catches.

I highly recommend that you download a demo of Data Rescue X. You can run the demo for free, but you won't be able to recover any files until you pay for the full version.

I also recommend that you read some of Detrius' posts regarding drive problems.

Originally posted by Tiny-E:
Is it difficult to replace hard drives? How much does it usually cost?

Try doing a search for titanium drive replacement. There's probably a post with a link to a website that shows how to replace the drive yourself.

[romeosc]

After you back up try reformating and reinstalling OS X. If noises do not re occur, you may have just had a bad sector map that was un able to be rebuilt.

Worth a chance.... keep backing up as a safety.