Over heating, Hard drive capacity drop, what to deal with first?

Ive got the 2007 alu macbook pro, 160gb HD running leopard. I use it for adobe design products, abelton, and net mostly. I re-formatted the HD only about 6 months ago when i moved to leopard and did a clean install of my software.
Recently i have noticed the fans jump up in use so i got a fan monitor program which shows that my laptop is hitting 75deg no matter how heavy (or light) i am using it. Fans are crunning at 6000rpm apart 2 or so minutes after power up and stay that way. My left fan sounds like it is starting to die, lots of noise and almost chokes every now and then like it is jammed.
I tried to use the laptop pretty light and havent really done anythign but surf the net recently but the other day i got a message stating i was out of HD space. I had 30GB free on my HD, i like to ensure i have at least 20GB free always to make sure i dont push it too hard, but when i looked in finder it said i had 120mb free. I then sat there watching my finder window and the capacity fluctuated before my eyes from about 700 to 100mb with no applications open or background processing under my control launched. I went and deleted some stuff to try get it back about 2GB but this didnt do anything, in a few minutes i was back down to 150mb.
I searched the net trying to work out what would cause this, some people have similar problems found stray log files using programs. I downloaded the directoryX program (Excuse me if that name is wrong but it is somethign like that) and the program told me where all the large files were located, but it said that my HD capacity was 119GB!! and it could not find where the 30gb had gone to.
I tried to degrag using Idegrag but the program could not work out my HD and said i had some tree problem.
Should i buy a new HD, or is the high temperature and fan issues going to ruin my new HD too?
ive searched high and low on the internet for a sollution to this problem but it seems somewhat unique so if anyone can hit me with some ideas i would be very appretiative. Im ready to drop cash on some new ram and HD but want to know if this is just going to be pointless as they will becomem corrupt too

cornelius wrote:
Rod:
Your not having had to replace HDDs seems to indicate that the drives are not used much. Modern HDDs are built for speed and efficiency, but are not built to last. The lubricant on the platters thicken and become gummy, spin out to the edges and the head sticks and the process of reading and writing slows way down. This happens in the normal course of using the drive. Despite the best maintenance routines performance will degrade, with regular use, over time...
cornelius
Well, their usage patterns vary a fair amount of course, cornelius. The boot drives in my computers usually cop a fair old caning for the first three or four years (until I get a new computer!) , running perhaps 12 hours a day much of the time. During this period they have to cope with a fair amount of mapping work, together with a dose of video and audio usage (digitising audio and video of field rips etc) Sometimes they get shifted to external cases if I get a bigger one. After that the relevant computer often gets passed on to someone else in the family , or to friends, or I continue to use it for specific purposes only. The useage may not be quite so intense in such situations , but it usually continues for quite a few more years.
The original drives in my G3 iMac, a PPC 5400, an LC575, an LC520 and even the one in an external enclosure attached to my original MacPlus are all still working fine! (I start the old ones up every month or so for primarily nostalgic reasons and the iMac G3 is still someones "everyday" computer!) On the notebook front the same goes for a PB12, a PB1400, a PB5300 and a PB190.
The drive in an iMac G5 (which I still regularly use) got swapped for a larger one after the first two years (I was always worried about this drive because of the high temps that iMac G5 drives tend to run at) , but it still runs fine in an external enclosure used for backup daily of one of the MBPs
I don't use any of them to the level of a full time server, of course, but they certainly don't usually live an idle life. Like I said, I've been lucky with drives, but I reckon the maintenance schedule has helped a bit, too!
Cheers
Rod

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Message was edited by: cph2133
Message was edited by: cph2133

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As I mentioned on this forum I started getting continous beeping.
I was finally able to get the raid working at a degraded level. I ordered a replacement hard drive which is arriving today.
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Blahblah 09    1000.2GB   RaidSet Member SamSung HD103SJ
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Harm,
Regarding your comment:
Re: How do I remove one failing hard drive from raid set and replace with new one
Please tell me how to read the serial number from an individual drive rather easily, without un-installing them:
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Cheers,
Jim

Over heating, Hard drive capacity drop, what to deal with first?

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