I understand your complaints about Applecare; I don't buy it myself, but then, we don't have a store here either so I'd have to mail the thing off which I tend to prefer not to do.

Disks are crappy in general, though, and go bad a lot. I wouldn't specifically hold too much of an Apple grudge about a bad disk. It's gotten to where I replace disks in important machines when they start nearing their MTBF rating whether they're showing signs of hoarkedness or not. :/

I hate disks.