Screeching noise and frozen screen!

Question

Hi, I have a 15" 1.5 Ghz aluminum powerbook that I've had since Fall 2004. It has worked fine for me up until a couple weeks ago. At one point it wouldn't boot up and I would just get a question mark after the beginning apple screen, but that fixed itself after I ran FSCK and repaired the hard drive partition. The problem is that since then every week or so the computer will start emitting a screeching noise (lasting for about 1 second in about 3 second intervals) and then the display will be frozen. As in, I can still see all the applications and windows that were running on the screen at the time it froze, but I can't move the mouse and nothing responds to typing commands either. The noise seems to omit from the right side of the powerbook, almost as if its coming from the location right near the CD drive input / the bottom right part of the keyboard. If I close the powerbook at that point the light on the apple goes off and the screen goes dark but the white light on the front doesn't go on like it should and the noise continues to screech and the same intervals as before.
This has happened on 3 or 4 separate occasions now and I have managed to fix every time by restarting and booting in single user mode or running FSCK and then restarting again to where it powered up but its starting to happen more frequently now. I'm fairly certain it's not a hard drive issue because the FSCK says that the hard disk checks out fine every time. Could it be a ram issue or something... do i have to reset pram? Any help would be appreciated.
To me it sounds like a part of my computer might be dying but what I can't figure out.

Answer 1

Thanks to that Tuttle guy:
Format the external as Mac OS Extended.
Select the drive in Disk Utility (the uppermost icon related to the drive), then click the Erase button in the upper middle of the DU window. In the new pane, next to Volume Format, choose to format the drive as Mac OS Extended. You don't need to choose the option to journal the volume at this time.
When creating an initial clone, it's always safe practice to write zeros to the target drive. Click on the Security Options button, choose to write zeros to the drive and click Okay. Then click Erase. Writing zeros may take a couple of hours to do on a 300GB drive, but you just need to do it this once. Afterward, just clicking the Erase button will be sufficient unless bad blocks or similar problems develop in the future. Give the new volume a name that is distinct from the name of your PB's volume (i.e. not Macintosh HD1).
Once the drive is erased and formatted, repair permissions on the source drive, launch SuperDuper! or CCC, set the Source and Target volumes and clone.
One note: In CCC, make sure that the only option you select in CCC's preferences is "Make Bootable." If you use SuperDuper!, you don't have to worry about that (though it will ask you if you are sure that you want to erase the target volume. Choose Yes.)
When the clone is finished, select the new volume in System Preferences > Startup Disk and click Restart. When you've booted into the clone, immediately open System Preferences > Desktop & Screensaver and change the desktop picture so you know which volume you're booted from just by looking. Next, open Disk Utility and repair permissions on the cloned volume. After this, you can click on the Enable Journaling button in the Disk Utility toolbar at the top of the window.
After this, shut down your computer. After two minutes, start up your computer, pressing the Option key immediately after the startup chime. This will take you to the Startup Manager screen where you will choose the cloned volume to start from in order to test whether or not it is truly bootable. If it boots fine, go through it and test some apps to see if everything is in order. If all is well, choose the PB's drive in System Preferences > Startup Disk and restart. When you restart, remember to reselect the PB as the startup volume in System Pref's > Startup Disk as well.
Joe