I have a 12" Powerbook. About two months ago, it started acting really slow. It was taking 45 seconds to register a mouseclick. It stopped booting up on the first try. Not good. I booted from the Mac OS X install DVD which lets you run several utilities, including Disk Utility and Terminal.

When I launched Disk Utility instead of:
SMART Status:Verified

I was greeted with:
SMART Status: Failing. Backup any unsaved work if drive not totally failed yet.
Luckily, I had backups of almost everything already. What wasn't backed up already, I was able to copy to my external hard-drive via the Terminal. I have Applecare so I took my computer there and they replaced the drive, took them about a week. If I didn't have those backups...years of work would have been lost.

So all you Mac users, here are some steps to ward off disaster:

1. Install SMARTReporter .It will proactively monitor your hard drives and alert you to any problems, maybe even in time to avert disaster. Disk Utility only runs when you ask it to.
2. Print My Mac Won't Start - A Tiny Troubleshooting Guide. It will tell you what to do when your Mac is acting funny. I keep mine in my laptop sleeve and it saved me by telling my how to boot from CD, External Drive, how to check a disk, etc
3. Backup. Backup. Backup. Have more than two copies of your photo library. Email yourself important documents. Burn CDs and DVDs. Just think about if it was gone.
4. Be Redundant. You can mirror your hard drive to an external drive with a free program called Carbon Copy Cloner or the commercial and very good SuperDuper! or Chronosync. Both are well worth the $30 they cost and provide more functionality and a friendlier interface. If your drive dies, you can boot from the external drive and continue like nothing happened. (Just hold down Option while your booting and it will let you pick which drive to boot from.)

Note: Hard drives are mechanical devices. Given enough time, they will all fail. I have seen drives fail straight out of the box, and I see others still running fine after 10 years. Some fail slowly, others in the blink of a power surge. You can't predict when they'll die, so you had better always be prepared for the funeral.

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