I've recently started having some trouble with my Powerbook. I left for a vacation in Mid-March, and when I came back two weeks later I realized that I had accidentally left my Powerbook running for the entire time. When I first went to use it, I had a bunch of programs running and it caused the computer to lock up, so I did a manual reboot.
Ever since then, my hard drive has been making a clicking noise, like a gear is clicking in 1 to 2 second intervals whenever I do certain things, like browse certain folders. I've also noticed that it does this for about 10-15 seconds when I awake the computer from being asleep, and it also takes the computer a lot longer to boot up, but it does eventually. While the "gear" is clicking (the hard drive, obviously), usually something is locking up -- typically it's Finder, but while it's locked up I can usually use other programs fine.
Most recently I went to boot up from a boot CD, just so I could repair the disk and take care of any problems, or see if any existed. It went through the procedure, but then it stopped at "Checking Catalog," and after a long time it eventually informed me that I had "invalid sibling links." I'm guessing this was caused due to my manual reboot, which corrupted the data in the B-tree. I then made a Boot CD with a copy of DiskWarrior 3.0.2 on it in order to repair it, but whenever I run DiskWarrior and have it make repairs, it says it can't rebuild because of a Mac OS services error.
The closest Apple store used to be in Wellington (FL), which is an hour and a half away, but recently we just got a new Apple store at the Palm Beach Gardens Mall, which is 15 minutes away (it opened up on the 23rd, and I visited it yesterday -- very cool!). Anyway, a friend suggested that I "talk to a 'Genius'." Should I go to the Apple store and have them check it out? I think my Apple Care ended a few months ago. Does this sound like I'm on the verge of a broken hard drive? Everything besides what I described above seems fine, and the SMART thing checks out.... but apparently something is wrong.
As educated Mac-o-philes, what should I do? I'm really not keen on having my laptop gone for a 5-6 day hard drive replacement, or for paying for something like that... or, of course, having to back up 60GBs worth of data on DVDs. So, if there's another solution, I'd really like to hear it. The most important thing I need to know is if this sounds like my hard drive is dying, or if it's the product of a corrupted OS. If it were the latter, I would be much more satisfied, but I'm getting a feeling that just isn't the case...
Ever since then, my hard drive has been making a clicking noise, like a gear is clicking in 1 to 2 second intervals whenever I do certain things, like browse certain folders. I've also noticed that it does this for about 10-15 seconds when I awake the computer from being asleep, and it also takes the computer a lot longer to boot up, but it does eventually. While the "gear" is clicking (the hard drive, obviously), usually something is locking up -- typically it's Finder, but while it's locked up I can usually use other programs fine.
Most recently I went to boot up from a boot CD, just so I could repair the disk and take care of any problems, or see if any existed. It went through the procedure, but then it stopped at "Checking Catalog," and after a long time it eventually informed me that I had "invalid sibling links." I'm guessing this was caused due to my manual reboot, which corrupted the data in the B-tree. I then made a Boot CD with a copy of DiskWarrior 3.0.2 on it in order to repair it, but whenever I run DiskWarrior and have it make repairs, it says it can't rebuild because of a Mac OS services error.
The closest Apple store used to be in Wellington (FL), which is an hour and a half away, but recently we just got a new Apple store at the Palm Beach Gardens Mall, which is 15 minutes away (it opened up on the 23rd, and I visited it yesterday -- very cool!). Anyway, a friend suggested that I "talk to a 'Genius'." Should I go to the Apple store and have them check it out? I think my Apple Care ended a few months ago. Does this sound like I'm on the verge of a broken hard drive? Everything besides what I described above seems fine, and the SMART thing checks out.... but apparently something is wrong.
As educated Mac-o-philes, what should I do? I'm really not keen on having my laptop gone for a 5-6 day hard drive replacement, or for paying for something like that... or, of course, having to back up 60GBs worth of data on DVDs. So, if there's another solution, I'd really like to hear it. The most important thing I need to know is if this sounds like my hard drive is dying, or if it's the product of a corrupted OS. If it were the latter, I would be much more satisfied, but I'm getting a feeling that just isn't the case...
