Hard Drive clicking when waking up

Lately when my iMac wakes up the hard drive has been acting a little wonky. The screen will wake up, and I can move the mouse around, but not interact with anything. From the drive, I hear the platters spin up, then the heads clack 4-5 times, then the platters spin down...then they spin up, 2-3 clacks, spin down...then up again, 1 clack, spin down...then once it spins up again, the drive seems to function fine. No problems with read/write speeds once it's woken up, disk check shows no problems on the drive itself.
Any ideas? The only thing I can think of is that this is either a software/firmware problem with the wakeup routine, or the drive itself is having issues waking up. It works fine once it's out of hibernate, but I'm a little worried it's not going to wake up at all one day. Really glad I've got Time Machine running regularly...
Thanks in advance for anyone's thoughts!

You need more than Time Machine.
You need to create a bootable backup using SuperDuper! or similar software.
Your internal drive is near death.
If your iMac is covered under AppleCare, then run--do not walk--to the nearest Authorized Apple Repair Center or Apple Store.
If your iMac is not covered under AppleCare, then run--do not walk--to the nearest Authorized Apple Repair Center.

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