Disk replacement was painless!

My Problem

My disk was grinding, a sign that it was about to fail.

My Fix

I copied important data to a file server. Replacing the drive was a snap. Reinstall of the Mac OS X Mavericks was easy (I already had a USB drive available for this). I recovered my data from the file server without a hiccup.

My Advice

It's so easy! Now that I my disk ins't grinding, I'm no longer worried about loosing data and software runs faster too.