Hard Drive Died After 18 Months

I noticed that there is an archive message that sound like exactly like what I'm going through, the only difference is that my Mac Mini is usually always running. I came home last night to find my Mac froze. I had to force reboot, and the OS would not load, I then inserted my Tech Tool Pro DVD and had it test hardware, and it said that my internal 80GB drive had errors. I rebooted again this time inserting my Tiger
DVD and tried to used Apple's Disk Utility without any luck, the app could see the drive but whenever I tried to repair/restore or format it would freeze up. My Mac Mini is about 18 months old (pre Intel) and now I'm looking at having to replace the hard drive.
Does anyone know if Apple is acknowledging that the 80GB hard drives in the pre-Intel Mac Mini's fail after less then 2 years? If so has anyone gotten Apple to replace them beyond the 1 year warranty? (Attn Apple Support Personel - If you read this perhasp you reply anonymously without putting words in Apple's month)
Not sure what it will cost to replace it, but if it is too much I guess it would be cheaper to buy a new computer... (hate to say it maybe a Dell $$$ and it would really suck because I've already pre-ordered Leopard) I hate the idea that I may have to pay a bunch of money to replace the drive, the one good thing is hopefully I have a good backup assuming that the crash didn't happen in the middle of the backup, but it probably did since it should have been backing up my system about the time it took a dive.

In addition to the suggestions and comments already made, it's worth noting that despite the large number of minis sold with those 80Gb drives, there has not been all that much in the way of reports here of the drives failing. I would be surprised therefore if yours was anything more than an individual component failure rather than one that is indicative of a wider problem. Not that I mean to trivialize the failure of your system, just that it would not appear to be part of a trend which Apple might be expected to have to deal with. I would also not expect any Apple personnel to read this and reply - and certainly not in any way that doesn't reflect the company's policies and acknowledged practices.
Given that a replacement drive would be significantly less in cost than a replacement computer (whether Apple or Dell), I think your wisest choice is the repair - particularly since that will allow you to take advantage of Leopard once you have your pre-ordered copy. If you have on-going concerns about the reliability of the mini you would at least then have a working one which would be easy to sell to help offset the cost of a replacement system - the non-working unit at present has far less value.

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