HDD failing?

[Joe O'Neil]

Sometimes my hard drive, a 15GB Western Digital, gets very busy and refuses
to accept any input. In X, I lose all open windows. In a terminal session,
I get the message:
ext-fs error(device ide0(3, 9)): ext_get_inode_loc:  unable to read inode block inode=95976, block=196617
ext-fs error(device ide0(3, 9)): in ext3_reserve_inode_write: io failure
ext-fs error(device ide0(3, 9)): ub ext_orphan_add: io failure

These lines keep scrolling, with 3 different inode/cluster
I can change to a different terminal and login, then the errors start 
scrolling to the new screen
Ctrl-Alt-Delete returns message that /sbin/shutdown cannot be executed.

When I do a hardware restart, the BIOS cannot detect the HDD
With a power-off - power-on, the BIOS detects the HDD 90% of the time and
the machine works again.

The first time was after 30+ days of uptime, the last 3 incidents have been
after 8-12 hours.

What is the best way, assuming that in fact the HDD is at fault, to transfer
the existing RH7.2 system, with updates, to a new HDD?

joe