Physical hard drive error
 

My hard drive is extremely slow and noisy, and a surface scan shows an error. I ran Disk Warrior and did a Tiger Archive and Install, but I still have the same problem. I saved my last bootable backup using Superduper last week, and I have backed up essential files I have worked on since then. Here are my questions:
- I believe I need to reformat my hard drive. After I do, do I still follow the same instructions in Section 5 of your user manual or do I need to reinstall Tiger?
- If I do reformat, will anything additional be lost?

Thanks for your help,
John

Hi, John. Sorry to hear that you're experiencing drive problems.

The first thing is that if you're experiencing surface issues, I'm not sure you want to keep the drive. It's not like the surface is going to fix itself, and the damage might be spreading, due to the head, etc. It might be wise to replace the drive.

If not, I'd clean install Tiger, and use Disk Utility to erase *AND ZERO* both the free and data space. This will typically test the surface and re-map any obvious bad sectors, but that doesn't mean that the drive will stay clean, if it's failing.

Then, I'd use Tiger's Migration Assistant to migrate your users and applications from the backup to the new, clean install. As long as your backup is current, nothing significant should be lost (but copy protected applications might have to be reinstalled).

Hope that helps!