Clicking down to failure, how long until MB hard disk dies?

[swingerofbirch]

I am very nervous.

Short story.

Apple sent me a replacement MacBook after many problems with old one. It has had constant kernel panics. So they finally agreed to replace it.

I was going to back up the MacBook now to a USB drive I bought once I organized the system like I wanted it.

Well, no time for that now. I picked it up and it started making a loud, loud clicking sound that struck fear into my heart.

I shut it off. And I realize the only thing to do is to start backing up now. I turned it back on, connected the USB drive, downloaded superduper, and I am backing up now. I hear it making that sound and I am sitting terrified the sound will stop meaning the disk can no longer spin. I have about 200 GB used up on the disk so it's gonna take a long time to back up over USB 2. I just hope the MacBook lasts that long.

Does anyone know how long it takes a drive to fail usually after the clicking sound starts? I have never had a drive failure before.

I have very bad OCD and am terrified of losing things ,and I have been thinking the last few days about data loss. I seriously have been. And I still was too stupid to back up because I wanted to keep organizing my system first.

I have one of those FreeAgent bus powered drives that's probably gonna be super slow too!

I kept thinking it was too good and too lucky that Apple is replacing this wit the new 2.4 GHZ aluminum MacBook and even upgrading to 4 gb of ram for me. I thought I was petty complaining about the kernel panics. And now this! It makes me feel like I was right in thinking it was too good to be true, that nothing is for free.

I promise to always do automated back ups from now on. I swear. I'll give to charity, just let me keep my data!

 

[swingerofbirch]

It seems 78 rubberneckers were curious enough to stop and read my request for help, and, so, they may be curious as to my outcome, as well.

The MacBook finished cloning to the external drive. Having nothing to lose at that point I picked up the MacBook and found when I hold my fingers along the bottom casing the clicking sounds slows down (like a fan winding down). I held it for quite a while and when I let go, it's almost gone altogether now. Though, if I lightly touch another place on the bottom of the unit, it makes a scraping sound.

Hope the replacement unit gets out here soon, but I don't even think they've placed the order for it yet, and it's CTO, so it probably won't even come next week.