hard drive fail?

Hi,

I own an intel macbook and have noticed over the past month that it has occasionally started to freeze and make a clicking sound. Usually after restarting I can get the computer to function normally, other times it requires two restarts. I downloaded and ran three 3rd party applications to scan the disk and tell me it's status. Both SMART Utility and DiskRadar say "failing" and gives me a message saying "196 Reallocated Event count" as well as "197 Current Pending Sector". On the other hand, the macbook's own SMART status says it's fine as does SmartReporter.

Can someone explain what "reallocated event count" and "current pending sector" mean? Will I need a new computer? I should mention that this computer is 3 years old now and I had replaced the original hard drive that came with the computer with a larger hard drive from Hitachi about a year and a half ago. All my data has been backed up but I want to know if there is anything I can do to fix the problems or if there is no hope.

thanks!

Once a drive starts to fail - there isn't usually anything you can do - other than back up and buy a new drive. I couldn't find anything from definitive but it may be under warranty still if it is only 1.5 years old. There is this site to check
Warranty/RMA

The computer itself is 3 years old so my warranty is definitely expired. The internal hard drive is a year and a half but since I manually replaced it, it wouldn't be under warranty at all.

As pointed out by Ivan, the HD may be under Hitachi 3 year warranty, so check that link that Ivan so kindly gave you and have a look

ooh sorry i didn't realize it was a Hitachi warranty you were talking about. I'll check that out, thanks so much!

Why not? Hitachi warranties their product. I replaced my drive as well - bought a seagate drive - and if it started failing I would contact Seagate (not Apple). Did you check the site I linked to? You can enter the serial number there to see if it is under Hitachi warranty.

Edit: Man I type slowly - 2 replies before I hit submit.