Mac Pro 1,1 Hard drive failure... sorta. Then not.

Question

I have a MacPro 1,1 Quad core 2.66 processor, with what I believe is the original 250 Gb hard drive. I'm running OSX 10.7.5.
Today when I powered it on, I could hear the hard drive spooling up (same sound as normal) then I heard 6 clicks and could hear the hard drive spooling down for a few seconds. It then spooled up again, heard 6 more clicks and it spooled down. Finally it attempted once more to spool up which was followed by 1 click and then spooled down with no more tries at booting up. Monitor showed blank grey screen until about the single click which brought up the grey screen with folder symbol with the question mark in it. I pressed the power button which turned it off. I tried powering up several additional times all with the same pattern of clicks and visuals on the monitor.
I did some research and tried to run the Apple Hardware Test by inserting the second of my original install disks and holding down the D key. Instead of bringing up the Apple Hardware Test, my hard drive managed to boot up completely with no clicks, and now appears to be running fine. I restarted and also did shutdowns... my Mac is booting up completely normally. I took the opportunity to make sure I have a recovery disk and the ability to download and install a new copy of Lion if the need comes up any time soon.
The main question is... was this likely an indication of a hard drive failure about to happen, as I tend to want to assume, or was the clicking sound and failure to boot a symptom of something else? Booting up while pressing "D" with the second install disk inserted shouldn't have fixed a hard drive problem... I wouldn't think. Also, anyone know the max size a replacement hard drive could be? I'll go with the same kind of hard drive as is currently in it, but not sure on if I'm limited to the original 250 Gb size.

Answer 1

BTmy1andonly wrote:
I'm not sure I understand your reference to "clone and backup." I assume it's something else besides a standard backup done with Time Machine?
The main things to realise…
Clones are a static copy of an OS or disk.
Generally they don't have the history of older files (some can).
OS clones are usually bootable - a really fast solution to 'oh carp my disk died' moments.
Schedule one to be made as often as you can afford to lose data (e.g once a day, or every other day etc).
Time Machine is a 'rolling backup'.
TM copies new files, preens older stuff & then deletes when space is running out.
It also excludes some inessential system files (like logs) - technically you will not get an identical copy back from a TM restore.
Archives are for the occasions where you want to store on another media for permanent safekeeping.
These need to be capable of being read in whatever timeframe you need to store for (a year, a decade…)
Don't archive with proprietary backup software or proprietary media, otherwise you will have a tough time finding a machine to connect it to it & run the software.
Several copies on different disks, probably on different media too (e,g. HD + Flash storage + archival DVD's…).
You may want to revisit archives & duplicate them to new media once in a while depending on how important it is.
Ideally you would have some offsite copies to protect against fire/ theft etc.
If you are in business you need to employ all options, if it's just iTunes music & some family photos, you still need to employ 3 types of backup