Review on Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB External Hard Drive - Red USB 3.0 - PC/Mac Compatible - 2 Months Adobe CC Photography Included by Brian Page

I received this drive 8 months ago and it still works reasonably well by my standards. For more information please read on. Recently re-reading the Revain reviews for this product I saw some people complaining that their drive failed after x months after ordering it around the same time as me. This prompted me to fully check the status of my drive so I could at least be sure it was fully functional at the moment. I ran a Windows read test using HD Tune Pro as my drive was plugged in at the time and the results (shown as screenshots attached to this test) show that the drive contained some bad sectors. a non-destructive bad block write test in Linux that for each sector first reads the sector and stores it in memory, then writes a random pattern, then reads back that pattern and makes sure it matches the written pattern, and finally restores the original content of the sector. I had backups just in case so I didn't worry and did it mostly for science. In the end, the SMART output showed that there are 2310 bad sectors on the hard drive. Since I waited 8 months with this test and used the drive sparingly, it's not clear if the sectors were always bad or evolved over time. It also just so happened that none of the data I had stored on the drive was in those bad sectors. Despite a clear indication of a possible failure, all sectors were fully restored after overwriting. This means that the sectors actually contained only a weak magnetic charge and were not permanently bad, for example through physical damage to the platter. Everyone. I've included the entire SMART output below if interested. MART attribute 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-fail7 Always 9049 3 Spin_Up06 Always Count 1x00Stop 00Stop 020 Old_age Always - 568 5 reallocated_sector_ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre -Fail Immer - 0 7 Seek_error_rate 0x000f 070 060 030 Pre -Fail Always - 11738583 9 Power_on_hours 0x0032 098 098 usw. 097 PreAil Always - 0 12 Power_cycle_Count 0x0032 100 020 Old_age веда - 52184 End -TO -end_error 0x0032 100 099 Old_age old_age old_age old9999999999999999. -0187. 000 000 000 ° ol0032 100 09999. 4295032834189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0190 Airflow_Temperature_ Cel 0x0022 054 041 045 Old_age Always . 8819194 Tempera_celsius 0x0022 046 059 000 old_age всегда - 46 (0 18 0 0 0) 197 Current_pending_sector 0x0012 100 062 000 Old_age всегда - 0198 Upline_uncrrectable 0x0010 100 062 000 Old_age Offline - 0199 UDMA_CRC_ERR110 100 062 000 OLD_AGE - 0199 UDMA_CRC_ERR110 100 062 000 OLD_AGE - 0199 Old_age Offline - 147 (146 13 0) 241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 9955309601242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 15389131969 You can see the number of pending or unrecoverable sectors. While it's clear that the drive is currently working, the history of weak sectors means I'll keep a close eye on it in case data is written to sectors that used to be weak, because if they become weak again the drive will spin down . I am having trouble reading them and as a result I may start losing data. Remember: all drives fail, no matter what make or model you buy. So always keep backups and be prepared for the inevitable.