smartd reporting disk failing

[JD]

On 04/25/11 17:36, Paolo Galtieri wrote:
> I purchased a 1Tb Seagate Go drive a few months ago.  It's formatted as
> NTFS.  Today I started getting reports from smartd that the disk is
> failing.  Specifically it's telling me that there are many bad sectors.
>    There are no messages in /var/log/messages indicating any failures.
> Why is smartd claiming the disk is bad?  This is the second drive (also
> a Seagate Go) that I get reports that the drive is failing less than a
> year after buying the drive. I can't believe that a drive would go bad
> after a few months use.  I have other Seagate drives that have been in
> use for years without any issues.  The problem seems to be specific to
> drives that are powered via USB.
>
> Any assistance in the matter is appreciated.
>
> Paolo
The worst problem with these drives is that they
are not ventilated, so they do get hot in that tiny
enclosure.
The second problem is that these external drives
DO receive lots of accidental tips, shakes (hitting the table
accidentally with your chair's armrests, or bumping
bumping the table with your foot....etc.). That makes
them very unreliable.
I do have an external 1.5TB drive. It has a 3 inch fan
that keeps it as cool as a cucumber. I have not had any
problems with it at all.