Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I received this drive 8 months ago and it is still working in an acceptable manner by my standards. For more details, please continue reading. Having recently re-browsed the Amazon reviews for this product, I saw some people complaining that their drive had failed after x months having ordered it around the same time as me. This prompted me to fully check my drive's health so that I could at least be reassured that it is in full working order for the time being. I ran a read test on Windows using HD Tune Pro since that's where my drive was plugged in at the time, and the results (shown in as screenshots attached to this review) show the drive did in fact contain some bad sectors. I ran a non-destructive write test using badblocks on Linux which, for each sector, will first read the sector and store it in memory, then write a random pattern, then read this pattern back and make sure it matches the pattern that was written, and finally restore the original contents of the sector. I had backups just in case, so I wasn't worried and was mainly doing this for science. At the end, SMART output showed 2310 bad sectors existed on the drive. Since I waited 8 months to run this test and used the drive sparingly, it's unclear whether the sectors were always bad or if they developed over time. It also just so happens that none of the data I had stored on the drive were on these bad sectors. Despite the clear indication of potential failure, all sectors were restored to full working order after being written over. This means the sectors were really just held a weak magnetic charge, and were not permanently bad from e.g. physical damage to the platter. As a result, the pending/offline uncorrectable sector counts were dropped to 0 and the reallocated sector count did not increase at all. If interested, I've included the entire SMART output below. MART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 117 100 006 Pre-fail Always - 154970934 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 097 096 000 Pre-fail Always - 0 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 568 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 070 060 030 Pre-fail Always - 11738583 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 2497 (146 170 0) 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 52 184 End-to-End_Error 0x0032 100 100 099 Old_age Always - 0 187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 001 001 000 Old_age Always - 587 188 Command_Timeout 0x0032 100 099 000 Old_age Always - 4295032834 189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 054 041 045 Old_age Always - 46 (Min/Max 32/49 #8) 191 G-Sense_Error_Rate 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 9 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 096 096 000 Old_age Always - 8819 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 046 059 000 Old_age Always - 46 (0 18 0 0 0) 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 062 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 062 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 240 Head_Flying_Hours 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 147 (146 13 0) 241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 9955309601 242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 15389131969 You can see there is an error count, but no pending/uncorrectable or reallocated sectors. Although it's clear that the drive is currently working, the history of weak sectors means I will keep a close eye on it in case data ends up being written to the sectors that used to be weak, since if they become weak again, the drive will have trouble reading from them and I could start to lose data as a result. Remember: all drives fail, no matter what make or model you buy, so always keep backups and be prepared for the inevitable.