Most stores - Comp Usa , Best Buy, Radio Shack, Circuit City, American - will offer in store warranties - they are extra - normally you have the sales guy riding your butt the entire time you are there trying to get you to buy one.  You must be one of the lucky ones if you haven't experienced that.

The only reason I say this is it is a pita having to ship out something that very well might crash.  Even so the store warranty wont cover data loss.  

My external recently crashed too.  The person at the store literally said these words to me:
 "If your data was so important you'd think you would have backed it up to more than one place."

Luckily we were on the phone and he was in no immediate danger of bodily harm.

I am:  aka Velocity3d