I think my HD is failing

Question

Began ~ 7-2009
Spinning Beach Ball of Death(SBBD), Freezes, only manual (Power button) shut down worked
Got worse,more frequent
Multiple times; repair permissions, verify disk, used Leopard DVD to boot & run Repair disk
Got worse, sometimes failed to boot & had to shut down again. Sometimes “?” folder on attempted boot so had to use option key & reselect default Disk to boot.
9-4-2009 Failed to repair disk
Bought Disk Warrior 9-4-2009, Rebuilt file directory
Concerned about file corruption (maybe in TM backups also) decided to reinstall O.S.
1st tried Archive & Install Leopard --FAILED- plan was to fix Leopard 10.8 & once fixed update to Snow Leopard. “The Installer was unable to import your user directory from the previous system. You will need to create a new account.” I did & updated to 10.5.8, saw that it worked--seemed OK. But did not transfer my files yet. (Have TM backup)
Decided to leave my HD partitioned (Boot Camp) & Erase Macintosh HD & Install Snow Leopard
Did NOT restore old complete system, User folder, etc since concerned about transferring any corruption.
It worked. Spent hours transferring TM files to new Snow Leopard.
Migration Assistant FAILED to Work DID NOT “see” my LaCie Ext. H.D. (WAS on Desktop)
Used Disks or Web to reinstall most applications over many hours.
1X Snow Leopard failed to wake from Sleep. Had to hard stop/start SL. Apple discussions show this happened to many others. I turned off sleep hard disk till Apple fixes sleep issue. Updated to 10.6.1. -- during restart got Apple logo changed to circle with slash & froze. Did manual power shut down start & booted OK to 10.6.1.
9-12-2009--Finally, when almost finished restoring system same PROBLEM began again! SBB, freezes (10-30 seconds at 1st) Slow & failed hard restarts. Often freeze after 5 minutes no matter what I am doing including nothing, no apps open.
Used Disk Utility booting from Snow Leopard to repair disk 2x in last 24 hours & 3rd time failed to repair disk! (Says reformat disk)
Used Disk Warrior 4.2 once again to repair directory. 3rd time in 48 hours?
Mac not useable; freezes, booting problems, directory continually needs rebuilding, Disk Utility cannot repair disk.
I suspect HD failure as cause. Do not think software since I tried booting into Windows Boot Camp partition & in 5 minutes got blue screen saying: “A process crucial to system operation has unexpectedly terminated...” Now cannot boot into Windows without getting this blue screen. Don’t see how any Mac partition software issue can affect a separate working Windows partition.

Answer 1

I’m updating to help others who may read this later. Brought iMac into Apple Store for Genius Bar appt. Monday AM, 9-14-2009. I had already checked the two Authorized Apple repair facilities via phone on the drive over. Either one would replace my HD with any HD I wanted if they could get it. No 15 minute appt. needed. Cost would be less (once I finally found out the cost of HD replacement from Apple store) One would do it in two hours & the other in 1-2 days. This would certainly be the way to go for typical HD replacement for most. Call ahead, decide what HD (larger?) you want & ask how long your Mac will be in the shop & the total cost. Be aware, some shops will quote you just the price of the HD itself leaving out the labor cost & appearing less expensive than the other shops -- so ask for the total cost. BTW, it is true that the Apple store will NOT replace your HD with anything other than the original type of HD whether your Mac is in or out of warranty & whether you do or do not have Apple Care. So, if you want to upgrade to a larger HD, do NOT use the Apple Store. Use an AASP.
I arrive at the Genius Bar for my 15 minute apt. (with plans to get verification of the HD failure & a price quote for HD replacement & then immediately drive my iMac to the AASP that said he can replace it with a larger HD in two hours) I explain the SBBD, frequent freezes, forced manual power offs, failure to boot, Repair DIsk failures, Disk Warrior multiple rebuild directory, etc. I explained about the failed Archive & Install & having to resort to Erase & install Snow Leopard. Told about the reappearance of the same exact troubles several hours after the new install. Finally I showed my printout from Smart Utility 2.1 ; “Overall Smart Status FAILING -- Yellow. Pending Bad sector 1 ID # 197”
The tech ran Disk Warrior himself & ran a different utility to check the HD status (which actually passed?) But, he said given my Smart Utility failure & all that I have done to trouble shoot he will accept that the HD has failed. He quoted a price about $80-100 higher than the AASP & then stunned me by saying that even though I do not have Apple Care & my warranty was up 10 months ago --they will replace the HD at N/C! He said it should not have failed so soon. Fantastic! Downside is that they are out of stock on 50 GB HDs & the repair will take 3-5 days. I didn’t get my iMac back until Friday evening 9-18-2009. (I know from watching web videos of iMac HD replacements it is a 20 minute job.)
BTW, after I got it home & reinstalled my stuff, I again D/L Smart Utility 2.1 & ran it twice & it showed RED (not yellow as b4) failure. Shows ID # 190 Airflow Temperature Celsius as “failing now.” Yet, the Apple Verify disk shows everything fine. Having MUCH trouble believing that coincidentally, my NEW HD would immediately FAIL w/o any symptoms at all -- I searched & found another utility to test my HD. “Smart Reporter 2.4” which works with Snow Leopard & is free. This sits in your menu bar & monitors your SMART status. My HD passed & still is “green.” So I think the Smart Utility 2.1 may be over sensitive & have given a false positive.
In any event, I now have a bootable backup with Carbon Copy Cloner on an external HD so if any future problems & recovery will be much easier/faster.
It was somewhat slow to recover my data since I was very careful in case I had any file corruption. I reinstalled all my apps manually from disk or web. I had a bit of trouble with Time Machine (TM) when I went to restore my documents folder. I clicked on the most recent backup for documents, pictures, movies, videos & they all were restored with a red “X” on the folder & the folder could not be opened in Snow Leopard! I ended up just using the TM HD as a volume & manually dragging over the contents of those folders to my empty documents, pictures, etc. folder. That worked. Also, I kept the Snow Leopard folder appearance which looks different than the TM backup folders which are Leopard. I did have an issue where if I opened a document & tried to change it, I didn’t have permission & had to manually go into info & change it to read write one by one so I ended up changing the entire documents folder permissions at once. Also, I was getting strange pop-up windows when I’d click on a sub folder & get a message that the alias doesn’t point to anything--but it was NOT an alias, no arrow, I never had created aliases of folders. Either changing permission for the entire documents folder ‘fixed’ this or it just isn’t happening anymore.
Now my Mac is back & working just fine with Snow Leopard. I have not been able to restore either my Boot Camp Windows installation or my VMware virtual machine of the Windows Boot Camp to date. I did back up my Boot Camp Windows partition using Winclone but not to an external HD, Just backed it up to my Mac HD & then it was copied to TM but attempts to restore from the TM winclone file have failed & no help from the Winclone user forums. I went into the external HD used for TM & just chose that winclone file to restore FROM but no help. I am not attempting to use the TM software to restore Windows which I know doesn’t work. I reinstalled VMware Fusion & TM did save the virtual machine but it will not work. No help from the VMware Fusion user forums so I don’t know if the issue is the lack of a restored Boot Camp Windows installation, a Snow Leopard incompatibility issue or what. So, I will most likely have to reinstall Windows onto Boot Camp again from scratch & them create a new Virtual machine also. Reinstall the Windows programs & manually restore Windows files which I also saved onto an external drive just in case. Much trouble that I had thought would be avoided by using Winclone. It is better to clone Windows onto an external hard drive but I didn’t see anywhere where this was required.