Hard drive dying: sleep or shutdown

[01jamcon]

So basically, my hard drive is dying (clicking/chirping noises, random freezes), but for now it seems to keep working and until it finally breaks, I want to put as little load on it as possible and was wondering whether its better to put the machine to sleep at night or turn it off completely?

I realise it's fairly minor by itself, so in addition I'm trying to stream as much video as possible instead of downloading, I've got it constantly hooked up to an external making hourly TM backups, also got a carbon copy bootable clone made. Basically I'm trying to prolong this drive's life for as long as possible, any other tips to help?

 

[andalusia]

You're very lucky to have noticed the end of it's life prior to it's death, and you have taken all necessary precautions to ensure you keep all important files and don't lose anything, nicely done. I would suggest ordering a new Hard Drive now, so that when it does die, you aren't left without a hard drive until the new one arrives. That way when it finally dies you can switch it quickly and get back to using it normally.