Western Digital External Drive and a VERY slow computer. Is my HD failing?

Question

Hello, thank you for looking at my question.
First off, I am NOT very tech-savvy, but I'm willing to research and learn, I'm just afraid to make a mistake and blow up my computer.
I have had my Macbook for 2 years. I have not backed up my hard drive during that time. Bad, I know.
Recently I've noticed my Mac getting slow with the "spinning beach ball" showing up more often and everything getting slower. Usually a reboot will help. Yesterday, for the first time, the reboot took about 8-10 minutes! I figured that wasn't a good sign, so I headed down and picked up an external hard drive (Western Digital Essential model, 1TB) and figured I'd back everything up. I formatted the drive according to the Mac partition model (tech support from WD helped over the phone) and got it going. From 1530 to 0800 this morning, of 52 GB it had only backed up 15.3 GB. The fan was running at high speed the entire afternoon and night. That's about one GB per hour. Is that normal?? Then, it froze and wouldn't respond, or back up at all. Just nothing. I held the power button down and restarted it.
At this point, I am concerned that perhaps the hard drive is failing (hence the speed and fan issues) and that maybe I should be taking it in to a repair shop (we don't live anywhere near an Apple store)
Do you think this may be the case? Is there any way to back up my hard drive faster - before it dies? I have two years worth of photos and papers, etc on there, music and such and it would be a tremendous loss if it all crashed.

Answer 1

carroteye wrote:
Hello, thank you for looking at my question.
First off, I am NOT very tech-savvy, but I'm willing to research and learn, I'm just afraid to make a mistake and blow up my computer.
Good! Better to inquire than leap!
I have had my Macbook for 2 years. I have not backed up my hard drive during that time. Bad, I know.
Yup.
That's about one GB per hour. Is that normal?? Then, it froze and wouldn't respond, or back up at all. Just nothing. I held the power button down and restarted it.
No, not normal at all.
At this point, I am concerned that perhaps the hard drive is failing (hence the speed and fan issues) and that maybe I should be taking it in to a repair shop (we don't live anywhere near an Apple store)
Do you think this may be the case? Is there any way to back up my hard drive faster - before it dies? I have two years worth of photos and papers, etc on there, music and such and it would be a tremendous loss if it all crashed.
As slow as that backup was, anything else will be nearly as bad.
There are four common causes of this:
Your startup drive is nearly full (less than a couple of GBs of free space). If that's the case, find something big you can "archive" to CD/DVD or copy to the external HD and delete.
The drive is failing.
Corrupted directores, etc., in the file system
One or more "runaway" processes, usually from incompletely-installed or partially-deleted apps
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It's a toss-up; try to diagnose what's wrong, or try to get a backup.
The fastest way to back up, with the least "thrashing" of your hard drive, would be to start up from your Leopard Install disc and use the Restore tab to make a copy of your internal HD on the external.
That will copy any file system problems "as is," but if your internal HD is beginning to fail, at least you'll have a full copy of the data (corrupted or not) on the external HD.
Check this to be sure your WD drive will boot your Mac: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?pfaqid=1787 If not, do all the steps below except #4.
Here's what I'd recommend:
1. Start up from your Install disc, per the yellow box in #1 of [Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html]
2. Reformat the external HD, with a single partition, per the blue box there. You'll want the +Mac OS Extended (Journaled)+ Format and either the GUID or +Apple Partition Map+ *Partition Map Scheme* as detailed there.
3. Use the Restore tab to copy your internal HD (almost certainly named +Macintosh HD)+ to the external HD, per #7 in the link above. Note that will copy the name of the internal HD to the external.
4. When that's done, quit Disk Utility, then select +Startup Disk+ from the Utilities menu in the menubar (per the yellow box above). Select the external HD and start up from it.
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The copy may take a very long time. There will be a progress bar, but they're notoriously inaccurate under the best of circumstances. If it completes, and you can start up from the external, post back and we'll see if we can find the problem, and either fix it or confirm that you need to take it to Apple.