Hard drive has 'fixed' itself... can this last?

My iBook (G3, just over four years old) suddenly started making clanking and clicking noises, and 'hanging' while this was going on. It would do this for short periods, then longer periods, then finally it would turn itself off. I took it to a Genius Bar, where they said it was the hard drive dying. That evening it totally failed to reboot.
However, the next morning it booted fine. For the next day or so I got occasional clunking and clicking, but it seemed to work well for longer and longer periods. Now it's as if nothing ever happened.
Can anyone suggest an explanation?
Should I assume that the hard drive (assuming that's where the problem was) is on its way out, or might it really have fixed itself?
Thanks in advance for your help!

Thanks for this. Everything is backed up. Unfortunately, a new hard drive will cost £220 sterling (around $400 US at the moment I think) to buy and intall - I've had two quotes, both around this price (including labour). Given that, I was thinking of buying a new machine - the cheapest MacBook, on the student deal Apple are offering until October.
So I guess my question is: should I hang on and see how much longer my HD lasts (could it be a year or more? or is that extremely unlikely? I've had no problems now for two days) or should I get the new machine while the deal lasts, on the assumption that the HD may have calmed down for now but will definitely act up again soon?
Opinions welcome!

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My white 20" iMac (late 2006) has just died and I think the hard drive might be irreparable.
Yesterday it wouldn't boot up and froze on the grey screen, however it worked fine from a safe boot. But today it would not boot at all, not even in safe mode. So I booted from the original OSX Tiger discs and ran Disk Utility. I tried to repair the disc permissions but this failed and told me the disc needed repairing so I hit Repair Disk. This also failed, saying the disk could not be repaired and must be erased and to reinstall the OS.
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