Computer Failure

I woke up this morning and turned on my HP Envy computer as I usually do. Unfortunately I could not get anything to load. Everything seemed normal last night as I shut it down but nothing from normal this morning.
After spending quite a bit of time trying to get the computer to load up or running diagnostics on it, I ended up placing several calls to HP tech assistance in an attempt to get it working again.
I was not able to get my computer to restore to an earlier time but I was able to run a recovery image and get my computer back to its original factory condition or at least it looked that way for a short period of time.
I then ran severall other diagnostic tests...all of which failed.
I finally called HP again and was told that I had several options. The 2 best options were to pay $208 and personally remove the hard drive out of the computer, send it in and receive a new one...putting it into my laptop myself.
The 2nd option was to pay $213 and some change to send in my computer and have a tech do what they called a "STREP"...which basically means that they go through the whole computer and repair and replace anything that might be wrong with it. They then load everything back onto the computer so I get it back in the same software condition as when I purchased it.
So for about $5.00 more, I get shipping door to door via FedEx and a new hard drive along with any other new parts that are needed to fix it. I also get a 90 day warranty for everything that they replace or repair.
For $5 more, I figured that was better deal especially since I needed a new hard drive either way. 
I asked for verification that this was a hard drive failure and not a virus issue and I was assured that it was indeed a hard drive failure.
The worse part about this whole ordeal is that we did not get a Square Trade extended warranty when we originally purchased this laptop(a mistake that won't be made again) and that the laptop was only 42 days out from the end of the original warranty period.
Of course it was....I wouldn't have it any other way.
The only good point out of this is that I was smart enough to have everything backed up on my new external hard drive. It should be interesting to see how getting it from the external hard drive back onto my computer works out.