Harddrive on imac broken?

[sloppy]

Hi there,

My almost 2 year old Imac is having some problems. When I boot up I hear what I think is my harddrive spinning up and work for a few seconds and then it suddenly stops and starts spinning up again. It does this all the time and it takes ages before my mac boots up.

could it be a software problem or another hardware problem. I just want to know before I try to replace my harddrive.

 

[JediMeister]

When the system is fully started up, go to System Preferences, to Startup Disk, and manually reselect your Macintosh HD. Does the boot time improve? If yes, at some point in the past the system was set to look elsewhere for startup files. If there is no improvement, open Disk Utility in /Applications/Utilities and check the SMART status (visible when you have the volume and not Macintosh HD selected), and partition scheme. SMART status should read Verified, partition scheme should be GUID for Intel and Apple Partition Map for PowerPC systems. If that checks out, follow up with a verify of the hard drive in Disk Utility. If it passes, great, if it doesn't you'll need to boot to the appropriate install disc (gray/retail disc if you upgraded) to try repairing the drive. After the repair, start normally and see the boot time is again improved.