Used Laptop hard drive question

Hi guys,

I bought a used laptop recently from an online company. Two months later I got the 'unmountable volume' error and after a few failed attempts to repair the boot file using a windows xp cd I contacted the company.

I wanted to know if they would replace the drive with a new one or a used one that could quite possibly die in another two months (since it's for work, I don't want the stupid thing to die again, i've already lost a weeks worth of financial info as a result)

Anyway they said I could send it back to them at my cost and they would replace the drive.
The replacement drive would be used, but I could purchase a new 40gig drive for $130 (i have no idea where they got that number from, since I can get a 40giger for $50).
They also wouldn't give me a refund since it had been over 30 days.

What I want to know is, would they have known the hard drive was on the way out?
Is there a way to tell if a hard drive is getting too old and is dying?

I'm just really annoyed that it died in only a couple of months and they don't really seem to care. Technically they probably haven't done anything wrong, but it just seems unreasonable to me to pay over $600 for an item that dies two months later only to have to pay to get it sent back just to get another potentially crappy hard drive put in.

I'll probably end up replacing the drive myself.
Cheers.
Irene.

I'll check this one and see if it has it.

I'm just curious as to whether the company would have known the harddrive didn't have long to live.

Okay cheers

I tried repairing the boot file three times using the windows cd though...

It just told me there were major issues and it did nothing heh.
Nothing was changed in bios.

I bought a new drive, but the old one is sitting on the table.