Yeah, bad sectors like that just don't appear for no reason. Something in the drive is seriously borked and it's only a matter of time.
As for replacement... *Sighs* You may be better off just buying a replacement drive right now, especially if you do not have a back-up rig to use. The thing is that turn-around times for warranty calls can take MONTHS, all told. This is including the time it takes for them to aknowledge and process your claim, ship the computer back to the manufacturer (they won't stand still for you to remove the drive from the tower - only certified techs are allowed to do that), have them do the work in their own sweet time (after all, it is for free), and finally ship it back to you. Oh yeah, and they usually have you pay for the shipping, too.
If you're really lucky, they'll let you have the store handle all the nasty details about packaging and shipping... but you'll still wait months for your machine to come back to you.
If you are extremely lucky (and this is only if the store you picked it up from has an in-house shop like Best Buy's Geek Squad), they'll do the work on site and it will only take a couple of weeks instead of months.
Really, IMHO your best option is to fix it yourself, especially if you have do have the technical skills to do so. You're only real obstical is the data recovery and that's more about finding the right sofware to do it.
Since this is going to be a (more or less) straightforward disc-copy, may I recomend you look into the Linux side of things? I know there are a few very useful utilities that can clone an image from a borked disc to a healthy one with relatively few problems. It's just a simple process of burning the program to a blank CD, plugging in the new drive (with the borked one still attached), booting up, entering some appropriate parameters, and then turning it loose.
As for replacement... *Sighs* You may be better off just buying a replacement drive right now, especially if you do not have a back-up rig to use. The thing is that turn-around times for warranty calls can take MONTHS, all told. This is including the time it takes for them to aknowledge and process your claim, ship the computer back to the manufacturer (they won't stand still for you to remove the drive from the tower - only certified techs are allowed to do that), have them do the work in their own sweet time (after all, it is for free), and finally ship it back to you. Oh yeah, and they usually have you pay for the shipping, too.
If you're really lucky, they'll let you have the store handle all the nasty details about packaging and shipping... but you'll still wait months for your machine to come back to you.
If you are extremely lucky (and this is only if the store you picked it up from has an in-house shop like Best Buy's Geek Squad), they'll do the work on site and it will only take a couple of weeks instead of months.
Really, IMHO your best option is to fix it yourself, especially if you have do have the technical skills to do so. You're only real obstical is the data recovery and that's more about finding the right sofware to do it.
Since this is going to be a (more or less) straightforward disc-copy, may I recomend you look into the Linux side of things? I know there are a few very useful utilities that can clone an image from a borked disc to a healthy one with relatively few problems. It's just a simple process of burning the program to a blank CD, plugging in the new drive (with the borked one still attached), booting up, entering some appropriate parameters, and then turning it loose.