Hard drive on the way out? Weird behavior

Really weird problem. I recently installed Tiger - got it for the holidays. My computer had been kind've slow beforehand, but now it's acting really weird. It's not "snappy" - that is if you define snappy as "starts up within a hour". (I doubt the OS upgrade has anything to do with this, but I figured more information is better - I did an archive & intall w/ save prefs, btw).
The last time I shut down my computer, about a week ago, when I tried to start it up, it sat on the Apple screen without the spinny-wheel for a good 5-10 minutes, then sat on the spinney-wheel Apple screen for another 5-10. It eventually started up alright, though it was really slow for the first few minutes - programs or windows would take 30 seconds to a minute to open, and I got the rainbow beachball a lot. It was as if the hard drive needed to "warm up" and was very very slow, gradually speeding up, until it was okay.
Today I traveled back home and shut down my computer in the process, and I barely got it started back up at all. It got to the Apple screen (without the spinny wheel, and sat there for a good half an hour.
So I booted to single user mode and ran fsck, which quit with "disk0s10 I/O error" messages. Next I booted from the hardware test CD, ran both regular and extended tests, which reported no problems. Alright, I booted from my Tiger CD and opened Disk Utility, but that didn't see the hard drive at all!
Next thought: boot into open firmwave, and I did and did reset-nvram, reset-all.
Again I booted into single user again, did fsck, which again threw an I/O error at first, but then actually ran to completion anyway and fixed a few little things, rechecked automatically and said there were no problems. And as it went, it seemed to speed up, as if the disk was again 'waking up', slowly but surely. I rebooted as the message said to and went back into single-user one more time, ran fsck once more, no problems found and no error messages. Again it definitely went faster than before.
So I tried to boot up, with hope in my heart, and low and behold, it worked! So here I am, having backed up my entire Home directory to a DVD-R and printing out a few things. I guess I need a new hard drive, but the Disk Utility SMART status shows nothing wrong with the hard drive, and neither did the Hardware Test CD. Plus, now, as long as I don't turn off my computer for extended period, things seem normal. Oh, and this hard drive was just replaced by Apple in March when the original died (SMART had been warning me for a while that it was 'failing').
What the heck!?!? I'm tempted to think it may be a logic board or something then, but the Hardware Test CD said that passed to.
Other than going out and getting a new hard drive (and a Torx screwdriver), does anyone have any idea what may be going on here?
Oh, and the first time I tried to boot from the Hardware Test CD, the Superdrive gave a weird, ugly noise and ejected the disk. Again, something that makes me think it may be more than just the drive.
One more possible clue: the hard drive isn't making any bad sounds, but when it's ultra slow the clicking is barely existant, and then as it 'warms up' it returns to a better working state.
It's a PowerBook G4, Superdrive, 1 GHz, purchased in late 2002 - so, of course, my extended warranty expired in early December '05 :-P.
Help!!!

Hey guys,
Just an update for anyone's who's interested. The plot thickens, kinda.
Yesterday, I did a write-zeros reformat of my hard drive... but it only was going to take about 45 minutes (60GB), and I was going out for a while and wanted it to last the whole time so that the hard drive wouldn't spin down. So I set it up again to do the 7-pass version.
That took about 5.5 hours for my 60 gigs, so all in all I did over 6.5 passes of write-zeros and it all went fine. Not what I expected.
So, I installed a completely fresh copy of Tiger and things seem alright. I even shut off the computer for 15 minutes once, and 30 minuts another time, and it really started up fine afterwards.
Also, I didn't know, but the default Tiger setting is to put the computer to sleep when it's been idle for half an hour or something. So when I went to bed last night it slept all night long. And woke up fine again this morning.
Huh, could that really have all just been a software thing? I've ordered a "cross-grade" from TechTool Deluxe to TechTool Pro. I've been meaning to buy that anyway, and it'd be nice to run a full set of diagnostics just to make sure it can't find anything either.
Could this have really been a software things? Seems so bizarre. I guess we'll see. If anyone has any more thoughts to share, have at it!
P.S. Thanks for the suggestion, but it wasn't a disk space issue. I don't think this drive has ever been more than half full

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<Re-Titled By Host>

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•Apple iBook Specs (All iBook Technical Specs) for entire series - everymac:
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I'm running and iMac 20-inch early 2009
Processor 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
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Software OS X 10.8.4 (12E55)

Step 1
Quit Calendar. Triple-click the line below to select it:
~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache
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Move the selected file to the Trash. There may be one or two other files in the same folder with names that begin in "Calendar Cache". If so, delete those files too.
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Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash as well:
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2009 MBP can't see internal hard drive - for the second time!

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