Bad Hard Drive or Bad File System?

Good morning.
A few months ago my late 2008 iMac went to the Genius Bar for what I was convinced was a bad hard drive. I was having long "beachball" pauses, until I couldn't do much without waiting several seconds, at least, for the program to respond, even if I wasn't running much of anything. I started seeing I/O errors in the kernel log pointing to the system disk. Finally, the system stopped booting, getting stuck forever at the grey apple screen. The disk utility was unable to repair the file system and the complete hardware test confirmed a problem with the hard drive.
So I was pretty surprised when I lugged the thing to the Genius Bar and they decided the file system was just totally messed up. They reinstalled Snow Leopard (something I could have done at home, had the tech on the phone not agreed with me that it was a physical issue), and I went home. It worked great for a time. I couldn't understand how a system could develop a problem so severe, but it worked and I was happy.
But now it looks like I'm running into the same issue. WoW chokes. Firefox freezes. iTunes 10 makes me want punch a wall. I'm not necessarily running all three at the same time, and other program are starting to act the same way. And as of last night, those I/O errors are appearing in my log again (oh yeah, the console freezes too).
If it's not a physical disk issue, I just don't understand how this could happen twice. IIRC, the Genius explained that the file system is self-healing, but eventually the problems stack up until it just craps itself. Is HFS such a delicate flower? I was gently admonished for doing things like running WoW and having a Bootcamp partition (the latter of which I don't have now). This seems like a silly thing to worry about. Both are perfectly normal uses of any reasonably powerful system.
Could it really be messed up a second time? Should I just insist that the hard drive be replaced? If you do think it's nothing more than a logical issue, can you help me understand how this happens and how to prevent it? I'm trying to understand Macs as well as I understand Windows-based PCs.
Thanks!

Thanks for the reassurance on HFS, Macbig. I wanted to trust the expertise of the Genius, but it was a pretty confusing situation. I saw every sign that on a non-Mac would scream failing hard drive, including an actual failed hardware test, and to have someone confidently tell me that the hard drive was fine and that the test could determine the drive was failed based on a screwy file system left me doubtful that I could ever quite understand these Macs.
I know I won't be able to take my iMac in for service this week, but maybe I can get a ticket in for parts in the meantime.
WZZZ, I will definitely run the extended test again. S.M.A.R.T reports all is well, but I can't remember the last time I've seen S.M.A.R.T warn of approaching doom before it was too late.

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Post full model and operating system!
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Hello,
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Hello,
A bit of an odd question but does anyone have any kind of recovery software for the Cisco IDSM1? I have a Cisco 6509 with and old(!) Cisco WS-X6381-IDS that seems to work fine, but has a bad hard drive and therefore wont boot. I get the "boot loader" prompt where I can select maintenance partition or application partition but both result in an I/O bad disk error. I know the WS-X6381-IDS is ancient, but I find the card oddly fascinating. I can browse the "application" software on the download center but I don't see any kind of recovery software. I can obviously replace the hard drive, but how can I re-install the maintenance/application partition and software on the new drive? I'm not even sure if this part of the card was ever user replaceable/maintainable.
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How do you know a hard drive is bad?

how do you know a hard drive is bad?

From the OS X "Help" system:
Check whether a disk is about to fail
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hi summersja,
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Regards
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Lenovo B570 Bad Hard Drive

My daughters laptop won't boot and won't allow me to do a system recovery which I suspect is indicative of a bad hard drive.
I've been through the troubleshooting forums and from the best I can tell, it's toast.
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Welcome to the Lenovo Community !
I don't know about Lenovo selling an OS installed hard drive, kind of doubt it, but another option to consider is purchasing a set of recovery discs from Lenovo for your model. Give Lenovo Support a call about the hard drive to see if that is an option. Otherwise check with them on availability and pricing on the recovery discs.
Lenovo Support
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24 hours a day 7 days / week
Owner & Operator of the following:
● Lenovo Ideapad Z570 w/ Win 7 & Win 8.1 Dual Boot ● Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro w/ Windows 8.1 ● Toshiba A75-S206 w/ Win 7
● IBM Thinkpad T-23 w/ Win XP ● IBM Thinkpad T-22 w/ Win XP • As well as multiple desktops dual/triple booting XP, Vista and Win 7.
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If I remember correctly, the recovery discs should have everything that came with the system. I could be wrong though.
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