hard drive issue?

Yesterday my MacBook froze up, and when I tried to restart it, I heard a clicking noise and then got a white screen with a blinking question mark (kernel panic screen, I guess). This kept happening for several attempts. I assumed these symptoms meant that my hard drive was cooked. However, several hours later, I tried it again and it suddenly started working again, and I'm sending this message on it now. But am I right to think there's probably something wrong with my hard drive? If so, aside from the obvious "do a backup asap," I'm wondering what exactly to do. Has anyone else had this experience of having what appeared to be a hard drive crash, and then had things start working again? If so, was it a temporary thing or did your drive in fact go bad?

Backup now!!!!

Get a new drive as soon as you can.

I've seen them run for a couple of years after that. I've seen them die never to be seen again the same day.

And no, that's not the kernel panic screen. That's the screen of no bootable system found.

bobtomay said:

Backup now!!!!

Get a new drive as soon as you can.

Click to expand...

So, if I'm backing up the system regularly with Time Machine and my hard drive fails before I have a chance to do anything about it, will I be able to boot from my external drive as-is, or is there something I need to do to make the copy of the system on the external drive bootable?

With your install disc and the TM copy you have it all, but it is just a bit simpler with a Bootable back up - http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/other-hardware-peripherals/179369-backing-up-do.html
But you wont be able to boot from your external drive but boot off OS install disc and restore TM data from external drive.

The Time Machine backup is not bootable. It is a restorable copy of your system in conjunction with a functioning hard drive and your system disc. So, if your internal drive dies, you are down until the drive is replaced.

SuperDuper! is what you want for a bootable backup. Worth every penny of it's $28 price tag. There are quite a few here that also use CCC.

I would not, at this point, try to erase your TM backup and make a bootable backup from your internal drive. It could die in the process and then you're in a real bamboozle.

bobtomay said:

The Time Machine backup is not bootable. It is a restorable copy of your system in conjunction with a functioning hard drive and your system disc. So, if your internal drive dies, you are down until the drive is replaced.

SuperDuper! is what you want for a bootable backup. Worth every penny of it's $28 price tag. There are quite a few here that also use CCC.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I will definitely get that!

bobtomay said:

I would not, at this point, try to erase your TM backup and make a bootable backup from your internal drive. It could die in the process and then you're in a real bamboozle.

Click to expand...

Could I create another partition on the external and put the bootable backup in one partition while keeping the backup I've already got in the other?

only if you have free UNUSED space on the drive, I would NOT attempt to modify the partition profiles currently...

I've been partitioning my drives prior to first use for so many years that I have never tried splitting a single partition with data into two with OS X. Have never even checked to see if Disk Utitlity is capable or a third party software is needed.

Regardless, you must know that even if Disk Utility can do it, anytime you go resizing a partition with data on it, there is a chance that data will be lost.

If your internal was not having issues, I'd say go for it. You lose the TM backup, so what, start it over again, your data is still on your internal.

While there is probably better than a 90% chance everything would be ok, at this point, the best I can say in good conscience is replace your internal asap.

bobtomay said:

I've been partitioning my drives prior to first use for so many years that I have never tried splitting a single partition with data into two with OS X. Have never even checked to see if Disk Utitlity is capable or a third party software is needed.

Click to expand...

Yes, you can. I found a good how-to on Disk Utility, and the page on nondestructive repartitioning is at Disk Utility - Add a New Volume. I went ahead and did it. After working on it for a few minutes, it was done and I now have two partitions on my external with one of them (I assume) a bootable copy of my internal drive, thanks to SuperDuper, which I purchased last night. One thing Disk Utility won't do that other programs can do is format a new partition in something other than a Mac format so that the partition can be used with another OS, but it does just about everything else one might need with disk management.

Congrats!

You should verify your SuperDuper! backup once made.

Reboot your machine holding down the option key. Select the backup once the options show up and boot to it. Play around in it for a bit. Launch a few apps, just give a test out.

Always verify your backups. Can't really check it out 100%, but make sure it's working and functional. I only boot to my backup about once a month to make sure all is ok. Could do it once a week if you're keeping and/or changing a lot of important data.

Are there any open-source programs that run in OS X for checking the integrity of hard drives? It sounds like Drive Genius might be a good program, but I don't really want to pay $100 for it.