iBook HDD malfunctioning

Hey all,

I've been having trouble with my iBook G4's internal drive. Ever since yesterday, finder refuses to open the root directory and my sidebar, where my apps folder and home folder, etc. should be, is completely blank. I've immediately assumed a physical problem with the drive, but disk utility returns no problems. I have Diskwarrior, and have attempted to rebuild the directory from another computer to see if that will help, but the program stops responding shortly after showing a "Speed inhibited by disk malfunction" message. I'm worried. I've already tried the usual repairing permissions and resetting the PRAM but nothing has helped. Any thoughts appreciated.

Thanks

I've been investigating this further. In addition to the root folder not opening and the taskbar not showing up, get info screens will not appear. It's almost like I've done something to finder, althought that doesn't explain Diskwarrior's difficulty with rebuilding the drive. I've tried every which way to rebuild the directory with Diskwarrior, including booting from the DW cd, but it freezes no matter what I do. Not sure if it would help if I did manage to rebuild the directory, but the fact that it's failing with a malfunction error must mean there's something wrong with the drive.

I want to go to superduper and make a backup just incase the drive fails, but I don't want to erase my older backup and risk the new backup process failing midway.

Have I stumped everybody?

So I guess this means there's no hope for my baby then...

*sniff*

Well... it was a nice drive while it lasted. The backup is very recent, and i've been able to pull any needed changes off the misbehaving HD. Mad Jew Thanks for the consolation, and the hankey.

And hey, If I look at this positively, this is a good opportunity to upgrade from 4200rpm crappyness!