Is my MacBook Pro hard drive dying?
I have an early 2011 13" MBP, i7, 8GB crucial RAM, 500 GB Seagate ST9500325ASG.
I've had it for about 4 months. Twice, including last night, the beach ball appears, concurrent with a sound that can only be described as a squeak, coming from, I assume, the hard drive. Then, the beach ball freezes and the machine can only be revived by a hard restart.
The cover is closed and I am using a keyboard and monitor. The Console shows nothing, no kernel panic.
I have done some research, and this sound is not like those recorded on YouTube.
I am at a loss. Is my hard drive on its way out? Should I be concerned?
Update
The responses so far have all assumed that because the hard drive is making noise that it is about to dies. Is this really case? Has anyone had the same circumstance? Also, why does the computer freeze? Is this also a symptom of a dying drive?
Another Update
I've made a video where you can hear the noise. This describes is much better than i can!
Final Update
I cloned the drive using SuperDuper and replaced it. No further issues.
Number one, backup immediately. At least if it dies you got all your data. I would recommend using a drive scanning utility to check your drive for hardware issues. S.M.A.R.T is useless, its pretty good that telling you that your drive is already dead.
All the really good utils aren't free. Techtool Pro has been my tool of choice, however its not cheap.
While you're at it install Disk Drill to get temps for your drive make sure its not over heating and also get some recovery mechanism in place (other than time machine). The basic edition is free. You can grab it from here: http://www.cleverfiles.com/
Is your computer still covered by warranty or do you have AppleCare? If yes, Apple will no doubt replace the drive for you at no cost.
But first get an external drive. Do a complete backup on it with a tool like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
Once done set startup so that the external drive starts up your machine.
Once you start up unmount (dismount) the internal drive which isn't running the show anymore. This should stop it from spinning.
Use the external drive for a while and see if you hear the noise. If you don't hear it it's probably the internal drive and if the machine is under warranty you can erase it and let Apple replace it (with your good backup safely in hand). If your machine is out of warranty you can erase the internal and replace it with a new internal drive yourself, then format it and use SuperDuper or CCC to copy the backup back over it.
Start up from the new internal drive and you're back in business.
Continue backing up daily onto the backup drive.
Note: The only possible problem with any of this is if the dying internal drive has some problem (bad) blocks on it that corrupt some of your data. As posted by others, it might be a good idea to test the data on both the internal (bad) drive and the backup after you make your first backup but before you go through the process of erasing the internal, just to make sure you don't skip the step of attempting to resurrect data on it with a tool like Tech Tool Pro. This may not be necessary but without testing the data it's tough to know.