Bad hard drive .. again!

hi guys ..

So I have a PowerBook DVI that I got last July (sometime in the middle of july, but I forget the exact date). So anyway, last November my hard drive died. I took it to the CambridgeSide Galleria Apple Store and they shipped it to Apple, replaced it, and sent it back. The guy that sent it told me that it was extremely unusual for my drive to die, because modern HDs are supposed to live a very long time.

Well, it's happening again.

My hard drive is going to die. A couple days ago, I could hear it spinning (it sounds like a monstrous fan underneath my trackpad), and I'm SURE that it's not just a regular fan. Soon after I heard this noise, it started acting up. Programs wouldn't load, and it became unusable (spinning rainbow pinwheel "of death"). I did a cold restart and the hard drive clicked for a while before a flashing question mark came up on the folder .. same thing that happened last time. I waited until the next day, backed up everything, and the hard drive sounds ok .. (for now!)
So I have a couple of questions regarding this .. what are the chances that my hard drive would die again, within 1 year of buying the computer? And since I am within 2 -3 weeks of my warranty going out .. what should I do? AppleCare costs $350 (I believe) and probably less with my education discount. A new IBM 60GB hard drive costs $300, and I could easily change it myself .. but if I wait and see if it does die or not, I'm running the risk of not being able to buy Apple Care, and spending $300 on a new HD anyway ... what to do!?

Originally posted by tpjunkie
you know, my div powerbook's HD has been a little peculiar for quite some time, I have VERY long start up times (sometimes as long as 5 to 10 minutes on the white apple screen) and when I run fsck -y, the same errors come up, and never get fixed, no matter how much fscking i do. I really don't have the money to shell out for a commercial utility, and I don't have the space to back up the hard drive and reformat it...

Click to expand...

I haven't tried fsck -y .. but when my HD is acting up I also have the same problem with the white apple screen .. it also takes about 10 minutes to start up.
I didn't have the space to backup either .. So I used the Backup util that comes with .Mac and backed up my user folder (and some other files) on 32 CDs ! Even though it did take quite a while to do that I feel safer knowing it's all backed up somewhere.

Mblazened - you're probably right, it probably is a good investment .. I'll have to try to scrounge up some money before my regular warranty expires! eek! Funny thing is .. if I do get AppleCare, the hard drive will probably be fine until the day after it expires.....