I finally discovered the primary problem with my PowerBook's HardDrive. During the times it made the loud screeching start/stop noises (usually when I was moving the laptop), I also had to hard reboot a few times from a crash. This results in a corrupt Spotlight index sometimes. A corrupt Spotlight index will keep trying to reindex in a never-ending cycle that results in the pauses I've been seeing with the "eternal spinning beachball." Others in various forums also experienced Spotlight index corruption from the 10.4.4 OSX update and carried it over to the fixed 10.4.5 (which fixed most people's spotlight corruption problems). It's from those forums that I found the answer to my short term problems.

To fix the corrupt Spotlight Index, I used a utility called Spotless which let me delete and rebuild the Spotlight Index and reenabling any messed up settings for Spotlight. After that and a reboot, all was (mostly) well again...

I'll still have to upgrade my HardDrive soon, and I'm glad I made the backups I did (I'll have to backup again of course). The fact that my HardDrive had been screeching days before still weighs heavily on my head and I know that it's just a matter of time before it spins its last "Death Spiral." I've decided that the most cost effective option would be to just order a 160GB perpendicular drive 2.5" HD that I can install myself. I'll just use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my current drive to the new one on a firewire connection. Hopefully that will solve my short term system problems. I'd definitely prefer to upgrade to the later MacBook Pros (next revision, probably based on the Intel Merom 64bit mobile chips) than the current one so this HD swap is the best solution for now.

Tags: spotlight, apple, spotless, corrupt, harddrive, powerbook, carbon copy cloner