Samsung NP300V5A Disk Error Help

I have a question about a Samsung NP300V5A laptop that appears to be having a hard drive issue that a friend gave me to fix a couple hours ago. She initially said she had been having issues with it and that if froze when booting. She also stated she ran the recovery on it a couple times in the past and it fixed it but not now.

When booting it errors saying "A disk read error has occurred. Press ctrl alt del to restart". The light for the drive in front of the touchpad shows amber for the hard drive. It is looking like the drive has gone bad. The laptop shows it was purchased on 1-21-12 so I would assume it is still under warranty and this model does not have a removable door on the bottom to take the drive out. It appears I would have to take the laptop apart to remove the drive and from what I have read this voids the warranty. I have not worked on this model laptop before and I am doing this for a friend so my main concern is doing what is best for her. I sent her a message saying I thought it maybe the drive and about the warranty issues. I know she does everything on her laptop and would hate to be without it for long.

I am not new to repairing computers/laptops by any means but I am a networker by trade and repairing laptops is not my specialty but am capable of doing it. Has anyone had this issue with this or a similar laptop and possibly know of anything I maybe overlooking like possibly a security setting that has the drive disabled. I will download the manufacturer's drive testing tools next too see what they say. I have googled this model and haven't found the steps to replace the drive if the owner wants me to so if anyone has a link to these steps/manual it would be appreciated. If you notice anything else that I may be overlooking I would appreciate the comments.

I don't want to void her warranty in case the motherboard goes bad 3 months from now. I am assuming this laptop has a 1 year standard warranty like pretty much everything else. The RAM door is missing the screw so I would guess someone possibly has attempted a repair on this laptop before. She hasn't answered me back on that one yet. Now it will attempt to start to boot to Windows but freezes.

Just heard back from her and she said the warranty is no issue to her. She can't wait to ship it out and get it repaired so she wants it fixed asap. Anyone have a link to the drive removal/replacement?
Thanks for the help.