Recently, I experienced a hard drive failure on my home media server. Luckily, it was in my Drobo and my data is redundantly stored to protect against a single hard drive failure (I have four drives in the Drobo). I was dreading having to buy another 1TB hard drive to replace this one - prices range from $80-$100 now. On a lark, I went to the Seagate website and punched in my drive's serial number and lo and behold, it has a warranty through 2013. A few minutes later, I'm printing out an RMA form and shipping the drive off to Seagate. Two days later, I get an email that a fresh replacement drive is on its way back to me. Total time from sending my dead drive to receiving a new one... six business days! Not bad at all. Much kudos to Seagate for their excellent warranty and exchange process. I know what brand I'll be buying when I upgrade to 2TB hard drives.
It's a cautionary tale but one most people never really heed. You never realize how important your data is until you lose it. I think most people have an unhealthy sense of security as it relates to their hard drives. People - these things crash more often than you think. Even people who back-up to an external hard drive need to realize that these are still hard drives. They can fail just like the ones in your desktop or laptop. If you can afford it, get a RAID type setup like the Drobo. If you can't, consider paying for Mozy's unlimited backup service. It's only $5 a month or even cheaper if you buy a whole year or two years up front. For the price of one latte every month, you could have complete peace of mind as it relates to your precious data.