Some really good indepth information by Anandtech if you want to get into the nitty gritty of the problem.
While it is a pretty nasty bug, there are definitely some practical ways to deal with it so that you may likely never have a problem and never need to go through an exchange if you don't want to.
The Source of Intel's Cougar Point SATA Bug - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News