I've been having an ongoing issue with my boot volume. For the last month or so, I've been seeing unusually long boot times or strange lockups that last a few seconds.
Results of verifying the startup drive.
The symptoms sounded like a hard drive issue, perhaps something wrong with the volume's catalog entries, so I ran Disk Utilities First Aid to see if anything was wrong with my startup drive.
Since I would be checking the startup drive I use for Snow Leopard, I chose to restart the Mac from another hard drive that has a backup version of the OS installed. This allowed me to verify the integrity of the drive, and also perform any necessary repairs, something you can't do on a drive you boot from.
First Aid reported problems with the catalog files, some missing thread records, and an incorrect directory count. After I ran the repair process, everything worked fine. Well, everything worked fine for a week, that is, then the same symptoms reared their ugly heads again. After a few weeks of this, I decided it's time to replace the hard drive.
I ordered a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB drive that, according to UPS tracking, is out for delivery this afternoon. That means I'll be spending the evening installing the Spinpoint F3 and copying data over. If all goes well, I'll be back here tomorrow.
Wish me luck!