Constant beach balling - is my hard drive failing?

[ayzee]

Recently my normally stable iMac has been acting erratic. When ever I am saving something especially apps like iTunes, or using flash it just beachballs for 5-10 seconds. I also had my Hard drive disappear for about 3 days, where It wouldnt boot up and was unavailable as a boot up option.

Does this mean my Hard drive is failing, or do I just need to re-install Snow Leopard? Is this a reason I can get the Hard drive replaced through applecare?

One cause for this change in my macs behaviour is that I have recently been editing/recording a lot of HD content.

 

[celticpride678]

I would certainly try a clean install of Snow Leopard before taking it to Apple for replacement. That eliminates any possibilities of bad software. If it is still have issues, I would take it to Apple. If the hard drive is failing and you bought your Mac within the last year or have have extended Apple Care, Apple will replace it for free.

 

[ayzee]

Thanks, ill be stepping up may back ups for the time being too

 

[toolbox]

When is the last time that diskutility was run and the permissions and disk were verified and or repaired?

Might be worth running that before reinstalling. I have seen permissions problems cause this. Happened to me personally when i installed SL.