tick-tock hard drive

[andy]

	Some folks may recognize the subject line: Bill Raffensperger seemed 
to have this problem back in early-May—
http://lists.themacintoshguy.com/Lists/ibook/Message/40717.html — now, 
my hard drive too is beginning to
count the day away (and began doing so early Saturday morning) with 
nearly the exact same symptoms: regular (loud) interval
'tick.. TOCK' with occasional hard drive spin up/spin down when left 
alone. No major heat coming off that corner,
and I haven't been running any drive-intensive tasks. I have it set to 
spin down the HD when idle, hopefully to preserve
battery, but HD wear-and-tear as well.

	I can still boot into X, obviously, but it'll give me a flashing 
system folder for about 5-10 seconds, and takes roughly
5-10 minutes to start up. I don't recall how to boot in verbose mode, 
so I'm not 100% sure what it's doing— but
it seems to take quite a long time... I've run the hardware test CD, 
finding nothing.

	Is this an imminent sign of drive failure? Has anyone else suffered 
this situation? (I don't recall seeing Bill's name
come up again in the archive since about late-May... did we lose him?) 
I've only had my Book for a couple months, I'm
probably erring on the side of caution/paranoia, but I'd hate to see 
this die.

	I've been backing up to CD and one of my network HDs all evening...


    andy
    calgary, alberta, canada