Powerbook G4 Hard Drive Concerns

[jynweythek]

I'm not sure if this is a hardware, software concern, or even a concern at all.

I've noticed that my hard drive goes into a periodic read/write state (or I suspect it is the hard drive) at what appear to be random times. This tends to lock up the computer until it's finished giving me either the colored pinwheel or very slow response.

Is there a background task that OS X runs to manage things on the hard drive that could cause this response? My fear is that there could be a problem with my hard drive (scratched disk or something), but I'm not sure how to diagnose that before the worst happens.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jynweythek

 

[tobio]

Go into Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility and click on your hard disk on the left hand window pane. (Mine says 74.5GB TOSHIBA MK80...)
Then at the bottom of the window there is a bit that says S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified. If is says verified then your hard disk is physically ok, if you have FAILING in big red letters then phone up apple and send it in for repair

Hopefully it isnt failing, so short of buying some utility to defragment the hard disk like diskwarrior, just make sure you have about 15-20% of its capacity free to work with.

 

[jynweythek]

A check of the Disk Utility showed the devastating "Failing."

Luckily there is an Apple Store nearby.

Thanks for the suggestion.