Help please! - Hard disk Volume Header problems and 'Beach Ball' hangs

Hi all
I was wondering if anyone can help me out with my hard drive problems. Until recently, everything was going fine with my Powerbook after upgrading to 10.4.2. Then all of a sudden, one day, at the login screen I got a beach ball hang which lasted around 4 minutes. When the dock is launched, I get another beach ball hang for an additional 3 or 4 minutes.
When it finally finishes logging in everything is fine, I can access all my files and do whatever I want to do at full speed, that is, until an app asks me for my administrators password which welcomes back the beach ball and a system hang for another 3-4 minutes or so.
Disk Utility says that I have minor Volume header problems but will not fix it as it abruptly quits before it finishes diagnosing the drive.
I have Disk Warrior 3.0.3 and have tried to use it but when I boot off the CD it does not recognise my hard drive for fixing puroposes but still displays the hard drive in the Hardware tab.
The SMART status of the drive is verified and there doesnt seem to be any problems in that respect.
I have repaired permissions, ran all the processes in Onyx and still no joy.
Finally, I have tried to use TechTool Pro but on a surface disk check it fails halfway through after shifting a few bad sectors around.
Everything seems to be fine if you ignore all these beach ball hangs but I'm worried about a very imminent hard drive fail. I am now in the process of zeroing all the empty spaces on my hard disk to see if the badsector problems can be fixed in this way.
When the beach ball appears I can hear the hard disk making a scraping sound if this helps at all.
Please help me! Its driving me nuts! I am also currently working abroad hence I don't have my Mac OS X Tiger install disks on me otherwise I'd just do an archive and reinstall.
Is this a physical problem? Volume header problem? I'm so confused!
Any help greatly appreciated! Many thanks...

It sounds as if you've attempted the appropriate fixes for your drive... Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, TechTool Pro and Onyx. If none of these utilities have repaired the problem then perhaps there is a hardware failure of some sort... perhaps a head crash has done some physical damage.
How old is this hard drive? Is it the original?
It's unfortunate that you don't have your Tiger install discs as a reinstall of the OS might relieve the problem. But I doubt it since, as you say, "the disc makes a scraping sound". That suggests to me the problem may be physical damage or wear of the hard drive.
If I were in your shoes, I would backup any critical files now, before the drive fails completely.
I'd replace the drive, and probably buy an external enclosure (USB or Firewire) for the old drive to allow for data retrieval until it failed.
Unfortunately, replacing the drive will require your software install discs... =( ... can't help you there.
TiBook G4 1G, PMac G4 dual 1G, MacPlus Mac OS X (10.4.4)

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Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
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Hi all
I hope someone can help me, and I hope I don't have a faulty Mac!
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Since then I've reinstalled Firefox but I have another problem and wonder if they're related.
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Some info you might need to know about my MBP
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SMC Version: 1.12f5
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Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
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The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.
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Help please! - Hard disk Volume Header problems and 'Beach Ball' hangs

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