Should I replace my hard drive?

[Natalia81]

Last night I was having all kinds of issues with my system (12in Powerbook 1.33, 10.3.9). At it's worst it could not read the hdd on boot up. I went to the install disc and was able to get to the installer menu. Disc utility did not pick up my hdd, but did pick up my cd disc and firewire drive (unfortunately I did not have a backup image installed on there ) But magically...when I tried again today it was able to read the hdd. I tried the disk utility...verifying the disk resulted in "1 volume bitmap needs minor repair" and 1 HFS Ok. so I do the repair. But it said it still need minor repairs, but 1 hfs volume repaired. So I tried it again and it came back with 1 hfs volume repaired. I restart and everything seems fine. I am now in the process of backing up all my stuff.

Is it safe to continue using this hdd? or should I replace it? I've learned my lesson...almost the hard way...and I'm backing up everything by manually moving them to an external drive. Is there a better way? One other thing I've heard you can boot from an external firewire drive...I'm assuming you install OS X on there, but will I still be able to use that as a regular storage drive?

Thanks!

 

[66217]

Why risk it, better have it checked at an Apple store.

Or go to another service store where you can get a free diagnosis (this if you don't have applecare).

As for the other questions I really don't know. But I doubt you can be able to boot from an external drive.

 

[Bern]

You can boot from an external firewire drive.

Get the HDD replaced, sounds like you have a problem with it.

 

[Natalia81]

Well, I was able to make a bootable copy of my hdd onto my firewire drive. I used CarbonCopy Clone. I have ordered a new hdd for my PB. I noticed in disk utility that my hdd says "S.M.A.R.T. failing". I'm still new to the mac system, but I'm pretty sure that's not a good thing! But I'm all backed up and waiting for the new hdd to arrive.