Dead Hard Drive in PB12?

I'm a longtime Mac owner and have never experienced any serious hard drive problems, so I'm not sure what I'm dealing with on my PB12 right now. Lately, when I boot, my PB sounds like it has "marbles" inside pinging around. It still booted; just took longer. But now, it won't boot and just hangs at the initial gray screen as the "marbles" rattle around for 30 seconds or so until the hard drive stops - necessitating a hard shutdown.
I can boot from Diskwarrior and have repaired the directory several times, but this hasn't solved the problem. I suspect the drive is dying/dead, but I'd appreciate any insights any PB owners can offer...
MacBook, iMacG5 iSight, G5 1.8x2, G4 450x2, PB 12-inch, iBook 300, iMac SE   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

Thanks for the post. You actually touch on something that makes me wonder what's going on inside my PB: my drive still mounts/unmounts properly when using Diskwarrior, and its S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics (as well as those of Apple's Disk Utility) do not indicate that anything is wrong with the drive... In addition, after creating a new directory with DW and rebooting from the HD instead of DW, the crazy thing works. It's just the NEXT time that it won't boot.
Obviously, there's a very real hardware-related problem causing the "marble" sound. Perhaps I should run Apple's Hardware Test? I guess I seek insight that would exhaust all "easier" repair options before I screw around buying/iinstalling a new HD.
MacBook, iMacG5 iSight, G5 1.8x2, G4 450x2, PB 12-inch, iBook 300, iMac SE Mac OS X (10.4.7)

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