Need second opinion, is my HD failing?

[Matthew J. Roth]

Richard Shaw wrote:
> Well it's a Seagate and is under warranty. I went ahead and paid the
> $20 for the "Advanced Replacement" so I can get the replacement before
> sending them the bad one. I downloaded both their bootable ISO and the
> linux version of seatools. Interestingly the short test showed the
> drive is good but the long test found an error.
>
> Richard

Richard,

My second opinion is that your drive isn't failing.  Before you send it 
back to Seagate, please take the time to read the following posts from 
Bryn Reeves:

  * Understanding S.M.A.R.T. test results 
<https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2009-January/msg03397.html>
  * Interpreting raw and normalized S.M.A.R.T. values 
<https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2009-January/msg03405.html>

S.M.A.R.T. test results are a little confusing and often lead people to 
believe that a drive is failing even though it's perfectly fine.  Your 
test result was good, because none of your drive's pre-fail attributes 
were below the threshold value.  It's likely that if you ran Seagate's 
diagnostic tests on the drive they wouldn't find any problems.  If there 
are any non-destructive tests, try running them before you go through 
the hassle of replacing the drive.

Regards,

Matthew Roth
InterMedia Marketing Solutions
Software Engineer and Systems Developer