Grinding Noise and Frozen Macbook

Last night I was awoken out of a sound sleep by a loud grinding noise coming out of my MacBook. This was not a 'hum' or a 'buzz' this was a full nuclear invasion Alert! When I investigated, the Macbook was frozen. The screen was on but the keyboard and mouse were unresponsive. I did a hard reboot (what else was there) and it returned to its happy little self.
I'm worried that this is a failing harddrive. Anyone else have an experience like this? I have an appointment w/ the Genius Bar but I'm not really interested in four hours on the road to get their opinion if they can't do anything until the computer completely dies.
PS. There was NO kernel panic.

A couple of things to try...
1. Run the Disk Utility directly from the DVD. Verify and repair permissions and then verify the drive. See if you get any errors and report back.
2. Run the Apple hardware test, also from the DVD.
3. Reset the PRAM and the SMC. Apple has outlined how to do this on their site.
If none of these things show any errors, that doesn't mean it can't happen again. I'm starting to think these hard drives in the MacBooks are flimsy and bad updates don't help either.

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