HD failing in 2006 Mac Pro?

[Clix Pix]

The primary HD, 500 GB, boot drive, seems to be acting flaky and I am wondering if it's about to give out on me. When I booted up the machine earlier today I got the infamous flashing folder with the question mark. Shut down, tried again and the machine booted up normally. I went ahead and downloaded and installed the update to OS 10.5 and once again when the machine tried to reboot I got the flashing folder/question mark. Uh-oh.... Machine booted up normally the next time, and I immediately began copying files over to an external HD. That process is finished and now I'm ready to attack the problem before it becomes a worse one.

The machine has 4 500 GB HDs in it and I am thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to shift things around and use one of the other internal HDs as the primary drive (as well as replacing this one with a new, larger capacity HD). I've never done this before, but I think I need to install and use either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper in order to make a clone (including boot processes) of my current primary drive. Is it possible to do it without using one of these? Which software is the better choice if I decide to go that route?

Should I run Disk Utility first to see if I can determine what's going on with this drive? I'd rather not wipe the drive if that can be avoided.

Some nice, clear step-by-step instructions would be gratefully accepted!

Thanks!

[Julien]

If you have an extra 500GB HD I would download CC then make a clone (easy as pie). You have doubts about your HD so why worry?

Why or how can you even work on a machine that doesn't have a backup? Total HD failures can happen in the blink of an eye and all data would be lost. HD are notoriously dangers since that are mechanical.

[Infrared]

Why or how can you even work on a machine that doesn't have a backup? Total HD failures can happen in the blink of an eye and all data would be lost.

*carefully avoids blinking*

[Clix Pix]

My Mac Pro is used primarily for digital image processing and in the normal course of events I back up images after uploading then and editing them; just before leaving for a week-long trip I shot a lot of images and barely had time to upload them to the machine before needing to prepare for the trip, so didn't back them up just then. Because I use Aperture for editing and because for a while there were problems with Aperture and Time Machine, I didn't set up TM to back up that computer. Today the minute I suspected problems I quickly plugged in an external HD and copied all the images to it so that at least now if the HD decides to flake out on me I'm covered.

I think that yes, the best solution is to use either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper and make a clone of that particular HD and then I will have peace of mind....

Thanks!