Kudos to Apple. I contacted the store to inquire about replacing the HDD on my dime. It turns out I was talking to the store manager and he said they will go ahead and replace it under AppleCare, after reviewing all the service notes. Hopefully, I can get another 3 years out of this machine.

 

Hoss, depending on how often you update your system, install apps, etc., this can cause your system to bog down. I'm still relatively new to the Apple world, but when my iMac was starting to slow down and act goofy, I ran a few apps to double check the HDD, and then I started to check permissions, volume integrity, etc. I ultimately ended up wiping my HDD clean and reinstalling everything (except my applications from Migration assistant...I had apps that I did not reinstalled on the new image.) Also defragged the drive.

By doing this, my machine's performance drastically improved...felt like a new machine.

One last thing, if you are paranoid about your HDD, install something like Drive Genius 3 on it. It will continuously monitor your drive for failure (Also, your drive should be SMART enabled, which is supposed to automatically detects HDD failures). Finally, backup your data so you don't have to worry about losing anything. Apple is one of the few companies I have worked with that has made backing up data and creating networks so very easy and straight forward that it would be foolish not to backup your data on an external wireless drive.