Unibody Hardisk semi-dead?

[radionickhead]

I have a Unibody Alu macbook...been taking great care of it since I got it over the last 4-5 months..
It was in sleep mode and I just opened the lid and I got the rainbow circle thing..and my macbook was ticking..I closed the lid and opened it and nothing happened...I rebooted and my hardisk ticked again and I got the boot screen with a question mark.
I switched it off, took out the battery and rebooted it and I'm back on it now..and it seems normal..
What happened?
What should I do?

Thanks..

 

[r.j.s]

Boot from the Install Disc by holding D to run a hardware test ... then boot from the disc again holding C to repair disk from the Disk Utility menu.

 

[radionickhead]

I did all that..
everything seemed to be OK.
No problems so far, but still very odd how that happened..

Should I prepare myself for future hardisk death?

 

[r.j.s]

Should I prepare myself for future hardisk death?

You should always be prepared for HDD death by maintaining a current backup. If you are using Time Machine, or doing manual backups regularly, then you are prepared.

 

[xraydoc]

You should always be prepared for HDD death by maintaining a current backup.

Quoted for emphasis.

Always, always, always have a backup.

I have a hard time feeling bad for people who lose substantial amounts of data because they have no backup. Especially on a laptop. One drop or well-placed impact, and boom! No more data.

 

[radionickhead]

I understand that, and appreciate the emphasis and all but I'm more worried about what to do now/ what to expect in terms of my actual hardisk..
Any other tests I can check? Or if I should send it to apple to check it..I have exams now and this is literally the worst period for my laptop to die on me.

 

[r.j.s]

I think that taking it to Apple will just result in a No problems found/unable to reproduce symptoms diagnosis.

 

[radionickhead]

alright thanks..if anyone else has different input it'd be much appreciated..I guess ill just have to hope it was my hardisk weirding out for some reason.