Firstly - thanks for your comment, its much appreciated. Its kind of nice to know that I wasn't alone in the hard disk failure area... Although it is concerning that I'm not the only one.

I am the same as you - my laptop gets treated better than most of my other possessions, but the hard disk still died (although my sister was using it at the time, I know she respects hardware in the same way I do - especially if its not her own... She's very tech-savvy).

This has taught me that although the OSX system is (at least in my opinion) the most stable and trustworthy OS to work in, it seems the hardware powering it isn't quite as trustworthy. This is turn has taught me to keep much more regular backups!

Thanks again or posting!