I just did a safety backup and will now start taking apart the machine. Picked up an identical Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160GB drive this morning.

Anyone have any tips about getting quick turn-around from Seagate on a warranty issue like this? I can't really use the "failing" drive for much of anything if I know (or suspect) it can die spontaneously - or for that matter corrupt data without actually dying.

I don't know of any way I'll be able to check the SMART status of any disks that aren't installed in the machine in the future...