Kernel panic - hard drive or corrupt journal system?

Hi,
My powerbook G4 shut down today with a kernel panic and now won't boot up (giving a kernel panic error after reaching the gray screen). The computer has been working fine, though the battery has run down, with the exception of not shutting down properly (I would have to power off manually). I tried various things to fix this (repair permissions, check hard drive, checking logs, etc.), but all those checked out and I could never get it figured out. I have been leaving the computer running because of this and it has been working fine. It is a stock G4 with no peripherals, except for a 1 GB RAM upgrade. The RAM was installed two years ago and tested strenuously with memtest with no issues.
I did have my hard drive near full, as I didn't realize that this could case severe issues. It's probably too full to do a clean Archive and Install. My fault.
I have reset my PMU/PRAM, but the computer won't boot up in safe mode or single-user mode. I get the following message at the end of single-user mode:
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007: root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC
panic: We are hanging here ...
Unfortunately, I do not have my backup disks with me right now, as I recently moved (I will have them in a couple weeks).
There's some data on the computer it would be nice to pull off, but not absolutely essential. So my question is: Does this sound like a hard drive problem or a journal system/file system problem or something else? I hear no strange noises from the drive (the fan is a little noisy, though). What can I do at this point while I wait for my discs to arrive from across country?
If this is a file problem, I have heard these are difficult to fix or even deal with in terms of data recovery, since the disk won't mount even in firewire target mode. Should I invest in a firewire external drive in order to create a bootable second drive? Purchase DiskWarrior? Create a bootable Linux CD? Any help would be appreciated!

darksurtur:
If you have the original HDD with which the computer was bought you likely have a failed HDD and should have it replaced with a newer, faster and large capacity HDD. The average life of an internal HDD is 3 to 5 years, and although it may not suddenly stop functioning after that performance gradually decreases until the drive fails completely.
A too full drive can cause serious directory corruption which can in turn lead to data corruption and possible loss, and eventually a crash. You should maintain a minimum of 15% to total disk capacity (5 GB minimum on HDDs of 40 GB or less) as contiguous free space to allow for swap files and directory expansion.
You should always maintain a current backup of everything you do not wish to lose as even a new HDD can fail suddenly. Using an external firewire drive and making a bootable clone using a utility like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner is an excellent way to accomplish this. Dr. Smoke's FAQ Backup and Recovery has excellent tips on backup strategies.
Please do post back if you have further questions or comments.
cornelius

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