RE: Is My Hard Drive On Its Last Legs?
It _might_ be a hardware issue.
Then again, it might be only a case of badly corrupted system files.
Do you keep a backup drive?
If not, better think about getting one RIGHT AWAY, if you value any of the data on your internal drive.
Here's what I'd suggest:
1. Get a backup drive (If you have both firewire and USB, get an external drive that has BOTH types of connectors).
2. Download "SuperDuper" from here:
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
SuperDuper will let you do a full "safety clone" of the internal to the external without having to pay the shareware fee.
3. Clone the contents of your internal drive to the external. You should end up with a bootable "full duplicate" of what's on your internal.
4. Boot from the external, and use DiskUtility to work on the internal drive.
5. You might _try_ to repair it first using DU's "repair" button. That may or may not work. You might need to run it multiple times to get everything fixed.
6. If that doesn't seem to be working, use DU to re-initialize the internal. Does it seem to re-initialize OK? Can you run the "repair" function on the [empty] re-initialized drive, and have it come up "clean" each time? If that's the case, it could be that the problems you were experiencing were software (not hardware) related.
7. You can now use SuperDuper to "restore" the internal drive. Just "set it up in reverse" so that dupes the contents of the external drive back to the internal.
IMPORTANT:
This assumes that when you copy everything to the new external drive, that it is in fact bootable with a good copy of OS X on it. If there's something wrong with your System files, you could find the external isn't bootable, either. In that case, you'd have to persue a different strategy, such as installing a clean copy of the OS on the external, "migrating over" your home files, applications, and other important data files, to end up with a "fresh hard drive" with all (or at least most of) your stuff on it. At that point, you can re-initialize the internal, and dupe your newly-constructed drive back to it.
- John
