Serial (repeated) hard drive failures - 24" iMac (early 2007)

This is my mother's computer. After years of my brothers and me advising her to buy a Mac so we wouldn't have to fix her Windows computers anymore she finally bought a 24" iMac. Since then the hard drive has failed repeatedly. The first time it was still under warranty (barely) and it was replaced by the fine folks at the Apple Store. The next time I had the pleasure of doing it myself (I've been doing such for a couple decades; walk in the park). The first two were, of course, standard/OEM Apple-issue drives. The most recent (installed less than 2 months ago!!!!) was a decent Seagate (same grade as the OEM drives).
Seriously, something is very wrong. Please put yourself in my position: My mother dropped quite a bit to buy this computer after I insisted that it would be more reliable than anything she'd used before. Her frustration (she is very verbal about her frustrations) after the first failure was difficult to endure. Now she won't let me rest until this is resolved.
I have zero desire to put another drive into this if it's just going to die like the last. Not to mention the cost. This is ridiculous! She has a great Time Machine backup, and I personally saw it running the day before the failure, so she's good on that front, but what am I supposed to do to prevent this from happening again?
Other than the previous hard drive replacement I have had zero experience with Apple support. I've never needed it. Do I have any chance of them recognizing that this is a lemon and doing something about it?
Look at it in perspective: This will be the 4th hard drive in less than 3 years. In my mother's computer. She's almost 60 years old. It gets maybe 15 hours of use per week.
Thank you for any help/direction/whatever you can provide.

Excellent questions. Yes, I have tested the drives independently of the iMac. I tried target disk mode first, which showed no drive installed. Then I removed the drive and tested it with two different external devices. In all cases my MacBook Pro doesn't recognize any drive connected, though it does recognize the external devices.
The iMac and the backup drive are plugged into a uninterruptable power supply which, in turn, is plugged into an excellent Isotel surge protector which isolates the printer and other devices which are also plugged into it.
I will definitely be getting this drive replaced by seagate. I just don't want to do this again.
The AHT never shows any problems. Is that normal? Seems like it isn't even trying to test the HD, which would make sense if can't see a drive attached. Hadn't occurred to me to run it right after installing the drive, when everything appears to be running just fine. Thanks!
And, to the other guy who cautioned me about the scary glass and fancy sounding tools (give me a break; I own torx drivers up to T20-something), you'll note if you scroll up that I said in my first post that I personally installed this last drive. If you'd like I can go over the pros and cons of each iMac design in terms of hardware upgrades and/or replacements. Same goes for the PowerBooks, PowerMacs, Macbooks/Pro, and Macs Pro.
I'm not a psychiatrist, so I'm certainly prepared to be wrong, but it sounds like you had a traumatic experience with your own glassy iMac. Do you feel like you want to talk about it? I'll listen if you think it will help you feel better.
Message was edited by: jonkun227

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