hard drive problem?

Hello There, I have an iMac G3 CRT witha seagate barracuda 60Gb hard drive. This morning while I was on line i noticed the hard drive made a ziiiiip noise and the screen I was looking at froze up with the beach ball spinning then it started again after about 45 seconds, (A couple of times before that I had had to try a few times to actaully connect to the internet as I kept getting a message to say my authentication had failed - this may just be coincidence - although I hadn't altered my settings at all). I restarted and noticed the hard drive making it's funny noise intermittantly. It then froze up again and I had to use the restart button on the side if the iMac to get out of the screen (mouse and keyboard unresponsive). I got the grey screen with the apple and the spinning 'clock' type thing but it never booted up. I powered off and left it for twenty minutes unplugged then turned on again. It booted up O.K. but I noticed the odd noise again so I shut down (using apple drop down menu) and I booted from OS X installer disk and used Disk Utility to do the 'verify' disk. It said everything was O.K. I then booted from Apple hardware test disk which gave me a thumbs up. I have a tech tool disk but it is for OS 9. My computer dual boots so do you think it is a good idea to try to start it up from OS 9 and run the tech tool disk? I am a bit scared to actually turn it on incase the Hard drives dies and all my stuff will be lost. I have a firewire wire and another iMac CRT I could hook up to. Any suggestions?

 

Hello There,
Thanks for the advice. I used firewire and transfered all my files to my old iMac. Better to be safe than sorry.