[MBA original] startup and disk problems

My old faithful Air has started to have some serious problems.
A couple of months ago, it started to behave sluggishly, beachballing in all applications, and then when I tried to restart, it wouldn't get past the logo/catherine wheel screen. I could get it to boot into Lion Recovery, where disk utility said that the disk could not be repaired. At this point I zeroed the disk (level one secure erase), restored from my Time Machine backup, and was up and running again - for a couple of days. Then the same symptoms recurred again, with the same results.
I began to suspect a failing hard drive, and had it replaced with a new one.
The Air worked fine since then, until a couple of days ago, when the sluggishness and beachballing recurred, followed by failure to start up. Again, I booted into Lion recovery, and ran Disk Utility again. This time it found many many problems with missing catalog entries, invalid nodes etc, and told me the disk could not be repaired. Once again I erased it (the new disk this time) and restored from a back. Last night, the symptoms recurred again. This time, though, when I got into Disk Repair, it found a similar list of errors, and it claimed to have repaired the disk (green status), but still it would not restart. I tried starting in safe mode, and the progress bar got about 1/3 of the way across, then disappeared and the machine would not start up. I tried starting with the D key held down but couldn't get hardware diagnostics running.
I'm beginning to suspect sofware causing disk issues rather than the disk itself, so I tried performing a clean install of Lion from Recovery. The machine started up OK after the clean install, (with my user account and files still intact, which suprised me - I was expecting to have to use Migration Assistant to get them back). At this point, I plugged in my Western Digital USB drive into the Air and copied all my documents and files onto it, in case I need to get at them without using the Time Machine backup. Then I shut the machine down.
This morning it has started up OK again, and I'm typing this on it right now.
Does this sound familiar to anyone? Any advice if you managed to fix it permamently?
Is it possible to run the hardware diagnostic from the original install disks for the Air system software? _Should_ I be able to get to hardware diagnostics by holding down D on startup on this model? If I've got Lion up to date installed, can I get to the internet version of hardware diagnostics via Lion Recovery, like on newer Airs?
If it happens again, my last ditch effort is going to be zeroing the disk, doing a clean Lion install on the erased disk, then just copying back my documents and reinstalling key applications (Office, Photoshop) from the original install disks/images. Does that sound like a sensible approach?
Otherwise, I'll have to try and talk my boss into letting me get a new one!
best regards,
Matt

If DU reports errors it cannot repair you will
need to use a utility like Tech Tool Pro or Disk
Warrior
DU can't repair and I got these errors:
"Invalid B-tree node size"
"Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)"
DU didn't show the SMART status. But I saw it in Disk Warrior and it said the disk was ok.
I tried Disk Warrior and it's just be stuck at the same place. This never goes away and so I just killed it:
"Rebuilding directory ...
Step 5: Locating directory data ..."
In DU when I highlight disk0s3, I get this in the lower left hand corner:
"Mount Point: not mounted"
So maybe I just need to re-mount disk0s3?
Anymore ideas, guys? Thanks.

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