iMac 2006 17" slow and hard drive squeaks

My hard drive has been acting up and only tonight could I actually get it booted. HDD makes high pitched squeaking noise when active, runs slow and peripheral USB HD drives either run slow or not at all. Thought the boot HDD was dead but is running well enough for now. Could it be a power supply problem?

davidja said:

My hard drive has been acting up and only tonight could I actually get it booted. HDD makes high pitched squeaking noise when active, runs slow and peripheral USB HD drives either run slow or not at all. Thought the boot HDD was dead but is running well enough for now. Could it be a power supply problem?

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Sounds like to me your internal hard drive is about to "die" on you. You need to back things up [size=+2]ASAP[/size]...and probably replace that drive.

HTH,

- Nick

I found a small app to test the HDD and it said it had some bad sectors and yes I have backed up. I have a 5 year warranty so I expect I can get HDD replaced free. Spoke to a local Mac service center who said they would put a 500GB drive in so that can't be bad. I am now thinking I would add extra RAM and upgrade to Snow Leopard.
I am still puzzled why USB HDD fails to load. I am going to check the USB volts (4.75 - 5.25v) to see if that's working right.