When good features turn bad-SMART status

[BenYankee]

So I just installed Panther on my G4 tower, 867 Mhz, single processor unit. After installing the new OS and putting in an extra 512 MB of RAM, I heard a clicking in my hard drive this evening. I've heard of the infamous clicking of death, and when I opened disk utility, I saw that my S.M.A.R.T. status was failing. Immediately I began backing up my hard drive. Thanks to 10.3 and the new SMART status feature, I was alerted beforehand that my hard drive is on the way out.

Here's my question...is there anything I can do to prevent my hard drive from failing? Also, if my hard drive is failing now, how soon until the mother board dies? Is it worth it to get a new hard drive or should I spring for a new computer? My tower's only 2 years old.

Any advice would be great.

 

[bobw]

Nothing you can do to keep a hard drive from failing. It's a hardware issue.
This, in no way will have anything to do with the board going bad, if it's just a hard drive issue.

I would get anew hard drive, unless you really want a new machine. Drives are a lot cheaper than machines. Get a couple drives for it. Use one for a backup.

 

[Total Konfuzion]

Nothing you can do to keep a hard drive from failing. It's a hardware issue.
This, in no way will have anything to do with the board going bad, if it's just a hard drive issue.

I would get anew hard drive, unless you really want a new machine. Drives are a lot cheaper than machines. Get a couple drives for it. Use one for a backup.

At least in desktop machines, Raid 1's are becoming ever more popular. You'd need a raid controller that is capable of handling Raid 1 and then you'd need 2 harddrives, perferably the same size....the raid 1 would basically use one of the 2 hdds as a backup drive...so that if one fails the other one is able to boot and run fine..then you can eventually buy a new HDD to replace the dead one and rebuild the raid...and on and on...great solution for those who have important data on their machines.