Hard Drive fail advice

[gannonsamuel]

Here's the deal:

I'm on an early 2009 24" imac,

I had a feeling my hard drive was on the way out for a couple of months as it had start making noises, it used to be pretty near silent, and the iMac had generally been a bit sluggish when doing anything...

Anyways the other day it finally gave up... I tried repairing it from the disk utility on the OSX install disk and it threw up hundreds of "input/output error" messages and said it could not be repaired.

So i ended up reformatting and re-installing OSX, and it's been fine since, no noises, no sluggishness, like i'd just got it from the box 3 years ago.

My question is these:

How likely is the hard drive to fail again quickly?

I've ordered a new drive and the necessary tools to replace it, but is it worth hanging on with this one and keeping the new one as a spare?

Is there a likely cause for the fail of the drive in the first place and what are good practices for keeping drives happy?

It is a 1TB and came with the iMac and it has never been more then 50% full. As far as i know I didn't ever push it too hard, i generally check and repair permissions about once a week or so.


Phew, that's it as far as i know, any thoughts?

Cheers

Sam

 

[babyj]

A good rule of thumb for hard drives is that if you think there might be something wrong with it then replace it asap. Not worth the risk due to the hassle and data loss (which will happen even with backups) if it does crash.

At minimum you should check the SMART status of the drive, Disk Utility can do this or a 3rd party app.

 

[gannonsamuel]

Cheers,

i'll put the new one in then and use the one at the moment, in an external enclosure of some sort until it properly gives up.