Help with my iMac... dead HDD?

[koobcamuk]

My iMac (17" C2D) has been my workhorse for the last 3.5 years.

This morning, it too an age (over an hour) to get any response after booting up - constant beachballing in numerous apps.

The RAM had no page outs, and there is 30GB free on the HDD (160gb).

I bought TechTools Pro hoping that it would help me diagnose the problems.

I ran a surface scan and I have 10 bad blocks (out of 312,581,808).

Does this mean that the hard drive is kaput?

What does everyone advise I do?

Appreciate any comments or tips.

 

[Hellhammer]

Repair your permissions and verify the disk with Disk Utility

 

[mach42006]

Sounds a lot like my problem I just posted last night. My MBP just over 2 years old started freezing randomly, and not under heavy loads either, about a month ago. Typically it would just freeze once every 3 or 4 days, but yesterday all of a sudden it started freezing constantly. It wouldn't work long enough to open finder and copy a few items over to my external HDD.

I have run all disk utilities, and they have fixed nothing, nor have they reported any errors. I have had a few people tell me that it most definitely sounds like the HDD is going. I have an appointment at the Apple store in about an hour, and of course, after trying all morning to get my computer to stay running long enough to copy some files, I now cannot get it to freeze...I hope they can see what's going on when I take it in.

It sounds like we're in the same boat, and it does sound like the hard drive. If you'd like, I can post back and let you know what they tell me at the Apple store.

 

[mach42006]

The Apple Genius yesterday confirmed that my hard drive was indeed failing. It's still under AppleCare so they sent it in for replacement. If I were you, I would make a backup if you haven't already, and look into getting you hard drive replaced, either yourself or through Apple. it could be months before it finally dies, but if it is like mine, the lockups will become more frequent.

 

[koobcamuk]

The Apple Genius yesterday confirmed that my hard drive was indeed failing. It's still under AppleCare so they sent it in for replacement. If I were you, I would make a backup if you haven't already, and look into getting you hard drive replaced, either yourself or through Apple. it could be months before it finally dies, but if it is like mine, the lockups will become more frequent.

Thank you for the replies

Yes, I used a disk utility application (disk tools or something similar) to scan and found 10 bad sectors. I do have a full backup so I've put it onto my work server.

The HDD is definitely dead, so now my MBP is my sole computer!