Hard disk failure and warranty

Question

I bought my Macbook in September '07, without the extended Apple Care warranty. My hard disk recently failed--after the computer shut itself off while attempting to wake from sleep while the DVD player was open and paused. (This particular sequence had happened before, without the subsequent hard disk failure.) Now I boot from my firewire backup, and disk utility and even the OSX install disk cannot find the internal drive. Instead I just hear this sound like a limping bird from that corner of the case.
At any rate, since my computer as a whole is outside the 1-yr warranty by now, I wanted to ask--can individual parts carry their own warranty, as well? Because this Macbook is still only lightly used, and it seems silly to suffer such a fate so soon.

Answer 1

Early hard drive failures tend to be random in nature. Of course older hard drives tend to suffer exponentially higher failure rates as the parts wear. I've had little used hard drives crash after less than 6 months. It just happens.
Unfortunately for you, the warranty isn't based on amount of use, but time from the date of purchase. Still - the cost of aftermarket replacement drives is so low that you could probably just purchase a new one at an almost nominal cost. You could by an equivalent replacement for about $60. You've already got the backup, so cloning it back to the new drive should be something you already know how to do.