Audio drive prevents startup...!!!?

[Kling3]

I had a PT session open and walked away for about three hours. Nothing unusual except that my 20" display was set to sleep by mistake. I moved the mouse to wake up the display and the digi session was still open of course. I hit save and then quite. I got that spinning color beach ball for several minutes. The session would not quite or force quite so I shutdown by pressing the on off button on the display. This morning the computer would not boot. All I got was a blank gray screen. No spinning bars no nothing except that the fan sped up. So I disconnected the internal audio drive (IBM Deskstar, same ribbon bus as startup drive) figuring it was suspect, and sure enough the computer started up. I tried the drive in another G4 and the same thing happens. Is it possible I got a corrupt something or other? Or is this what happens when a drive craps out? PT still works on my third internal drive (Western Digital) for what its worth. And yes I have some valuable things that were not yet backed up. Any thoughts?

Thanks

PT 6.4/core audio 6.5/ OS 10.3.4
002rack

[Kling3]

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