Hard Drive Crash

Last night, I'm pretty sure my Macbook hard drive crashed. AGAIN. I first ordered it online on July 5th of 2007 brand new right from the Apple Store. On January 11th of 2008, my first hard drive crashed. System locked up, heard clicking under the keyboard, blinking folder with a question mark inside of it whenever it was powered on. I took it to the Apple store, the Genius Bar guy took the HD out and checked it-dead. It was replaced on the 17th-I kept the receipt just incase. Last night I was typing a paper up for my Child Psych class when iTunes stopped responding. When I tried to quit it (command+q), nothing happened. I clicked the Apple in the top left hand corner to force quit it, and the whole system locked up. I heard clicking under the keyboard again, so I manually shut it off. And now I have the same blinking folder with the question mark again, and this time it even makes a beeping sound for me sometimes.
I called Apple this afternoon, and they keep wanting me to reset this, reset that, try this and try that. I've tried everything just as I did in January when this first happened, and no luck again. I was told to make an appointment at the nearest store (which is 65 miles away, 130 round trip) so they could tell me it was dead and give me a new one just to crash again in a few months and I lose everything all over again.
Anyway, the whole point of this is to find out what could be causing me to lose HD after HD? I really know nothing about Macs as a whole except for hard drive crashing issue; I've only used the OS for a little over a year so I'm putting this out there to anyone who knows more about them than I do. The machine mainly stays on my computer desk, but sometimes it ventures over to my bed. I charge it as needed, it doesn't leave the house (been too scared to do a lot with it since the first crash) so isn't slammed around in a backpack or dropped. Could it be actual hardware inside that is causing the failures, and if so, is that something that Apple could potentially check out and diagnose?
Thanks!

Laptops are picky things for the reason that everything is crammed into a small space. It could be a bad batch of HDs, or the heat is not properly being vented causing the HD to overheat and eventually die.

Get a new drive again, and ask for a different model this time. If it dies again, it is something with the laptop itself and I would then proceed to bug apple about it.

I have the same problem with my macbook. It just happened yesterday and I am so upset as all my work is in it and the question mark keeps poppng up.

Called mac support and they said that I need to take it in. I alos had a disc stuck in the computer. The mac support was helpful in getting the disc out.

Here's how you do it. Before turning on your mac, hold on and click your mousepad. With your finger still holding on to the click button of your mouse pad, turn on your mac. Keep holding on to the click button of your mouse pad until the disc ejects. I am presumeing that you have a disc in it, but if you haven't please ignore my procedure.

The mac support also told me to leave the mac book rested for at least 5 hours before turning it on again as it needs to cool off. I am by my mac book now waiting to turn in on.

All the best hope it woks.

If you have AppleCare, just call Apple and they will send you a box to send it in to them and they pay for shipping both ways....that will save you two 130 mile trips!

To the OP:

Hard drives in notebook computers are susceptible to greater stress and heat issues than those which are used in a desktop computer such as an iMac. PC notebook computers are no different, hard drives fail at a greater rate. I just replaced one in my Toshiba notebook.

Hopefully, you learned from the last failure to make backups. And that's about the only real protection you have. Buy an external drive, use Time Machine or some other program to make frequent backups. Then when a failure occurs, you can be up and running in no time without losing valuable work or data.

Regards.