MacBook Pro 2011 15" won't boot - ML

Hi,
Over the past few weeks I've bene experiencing problems with my 2011 15" MBP.
Initially, I though they were s/w related, but am no longer certain ... and was wondering if anyone has had a similar experience?? Here's what's been happening:
* about a month ago my machine started to run really slowly. It didn't freeze, but would run incredibly slowly. After reading the forums, I found some info RE apple mail and vacuuming the mail file and a few other housecleaning suggestions which claimed to help. I did these and it seemed that things went back to normal, particularly after deleting the index file in mail.
* Alas, the problem crept back after about a week. This time my machine came close to unresponsive, so I decided to reboot. Upon doing this, I couldn't get into the OS ... the grey apple logo appeared on start-up, then a white indicator bar, then it would just shut down. I tried booting into the recovery mode and using disk utility to check permissions. There were heaps of errors. I realised that fixing permissions can sometimes do harm, but had a complete TM backup so I wasn't too stressed. The repaair perimissions failed. I then did a verify disk and this too failed. Hmm.
* Now I thought that the HDD may be bad, or that the OS had become corrupted, so I decided to do a clean install of ML. This worked ... and all was well ... I made sure to check permissions and the disk in disk utility a few times and it said all was perfect.
* I managed to load my apps and data/files from TM backup. But, the day that I did a restore of my iphoto library (220Gb), the machine started running slow again. I noticed that a few times it seemd to be stuck indexing the HDD. Odd. It never got passed 'calculating the time'. I rebooted a couple of times, then was back to the unable to start scenario.
* Once again, I went into recovery mode, disk utilities and found heaps of disk permission errors. This time the option to fix was avail, so I 'fixed them'. After rebooting back into recovery mode and trying this again, more permission errors were found, but the option to fix them was now greyed out. I also tried to verify the disk and this failed - indicating HDD issues.
* My second last step was to go into terminal and try /sbin/fsck -yf to check the HDD. The HDD passed all tests and reported back that it was fine. Hmm?
* Finally I tried booting into my Windows 7 partition and that worked fine. I was also able to see the data in the OS X partition - but have't tried doing anything with it (yet).
Before I run off ad replace the HDD, or freak out that maybe something more sinister is damaged ... I hope someone out there could offer further troubleshooting suggestions or help? Does thid sound s/w or h/w related?
BTW, My HDD is a Toshiba MK 7559GSXF 750 Gb.
PS - My machine exhibited the exact same symptoms last year when I was running Snow Leopard. The Apple store recommended I do a clean install - which I did - and at the same time switched to ML. Since then, all was running fine for about a year!
PS - I don't have Disk Warrior ... but have had a quick look at it ... not so simple to use and wasn't sure what verison to run on Moutain Lion.
Thanks in advance ...

Hi ds store,
Thanks heaps for your help. In your suggestion, you mentioned two things:
1) Reformat the drive with a secure erase. When I did my previous (non secure) format of the drive, I made sure to check with DU that the drive was OK. After the format, it reported 'no errors' at all. I'm just wondering how the secure format will provide any additional benefit? Assuming that once that's done it will again report no errors. I guess what I am asking is, does the secure format do a more thorough scan or check as part of the process?
2) Find and replace 'corrupted' files. Yikes ... how does one do this? I've got about 700Gb of data (pics, files, work, research, etc). How could I identify possible issues?
As an aside, I have not yet performed the format b/c I reaslised that I have a few photos in my iPhoto library that didn't backup before this issue. There are about 100 recent pics that didn't make it to the TM iPhoto backup. As mentioend before, I can boot in my Win7 partition and 'see' the Mac HD, and know I can copythe files in the Master directory across (if I knew which ones they were) ... but ...
Think it would be easier to connect my iMac (running SL) to my MBP and open the iPhoto library directly on my iMac. This way I could identify the relevant pics quickly and copy them to my iMac temporarily.
However, for some reason, even though I've turned on sharing for the MacHD/...users/XX/Photos directory (while in Win7), my iMac doesn't recognise or allow me to open the iPhoto directory - is this a permission thing ... or is it b/c I am trying to look at a Mac partition 'through' the Win7 o/s?
Any advice would be great ..
Thanks in advance.

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