What is going on with the Hard drives?

I purchased my macbook in Feb 2007. I've had two 160GB macbook hard drives corrupted (beyond any data retrieval) since then (and in the last year). I lost a great deal of PhD Thesis the first time.
Both times i had the screen freeze (unrelated to power since both were fully charged) and when I rebooted the HD could not be accessed. Seems to be corrupting the category B-tree in the catalogue. I have no idea what this means except i have no love for the B-tree. Off to mac repairers. Apple will not replace your HD without the old one which does create dramas when your old one is at data recovery.
I've learnt my external hard drive lesson (but always remember to back up your iTunes and iPhotos) since then but what's a reasonable expectation for your macbook to corrupt it's hard drive? Each HD took exactly 8 months to corrupt. coincidence? unlikely.
I have extra applecare protection cover but apple seem to think it's reasonable to replace the hard drive again and won't replace the macbook. I'm don't think that living in fear for the next 8 months is an appropriate resolution?
Is there an issue with macbook hardware that explains the HD corruption epidemic?

There have been some reports of a couple of runs of bad drives from the drive manufacturers, most reports being of Seagate drives, but I've seen nothing confirmed by any of the manufacturers. But all laptop manufacturers get their drives from the same vendors, so any vendor is equally likely to have a problem in such a circumstance. It's possible that your replacement drive was of the same series and so had the same problem, if such a problem really does exists. But laptop drives, being of very tiny parts, are more susceptible to failure; they're just not as robust as desktop drives, and of course are subject to more shock from travel. In my experience, support hundreds of laptops from various vendors, MacBooks are no more prone to hard drive failure than are any other manufacturer's system. So it could well have just been bad luck (presuming that the problem was indeed a hardware failure).
As to replacement, it's quite reasonable for Apple to just replace the hard drive again in the case of another failure, as there is really nothing in such a circumstance that would make replacing the entire MacBook help the situation.
Sorry you've had bad luck. I hope that your system behaves well from now on.
Regards.

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