My personal machine is ailing. It freezes up for 30 seconds at a time–even iTunes stops playing. FireFox crashes before it’s done launching. I’m scared to reboot for fear the machine won’t come back up. SMARTReporter lists an operating age of 15k hours, a suspicious Power-Off_Retract_Count of over 25 billion–whatever this represents, it’s happened an impressive average of several hundred times per second for the life of the drive. Also a Load_Cycle_Count of over 866k (where typical lifespan is 300-600k). New HDD ordered.
Changing to a new hard drive is the digital equivalent of moving. Disruptive to your routine, and you’re living out of boxes for months afterward. Not much fun, but also an opportunity to reorganize a few things, to start fresh. -m