[dnanian]

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!