I have a 1.5TB Seagate hard drive I use for offsite backups. I've only used it around 30 times, it has around 20 power on hours. Generally I write data to the disk then leave it alone, and I do these backups every couple of months or after a major event. It's around 50% full of DNG/PSD files.
Today when I plugged it in it showed one reallocated sector. I thought I'd do a defrag, just to move the data around and see if it found more. It's found one more bad sector so far. If I left it going I might find a few more.
I have about four sets of backups:
- I have most of the data on a disk in my PC, though the older stuff is removed eventually
- I have all of the data backed up to a disk in a drawer in my office
- I have most of the data backed up to another disk in my shed
- I have my data backed up twice a year to a disk in offsite location one
- I have this disk, which is backed up to offsite location two
Since I've only had two reallocated sectors, and I have four copies of my data, do y'all think I should replace the disk or just watch it for a while to see what happens? In generally my philosophy is one error and it's gone, but in this situation I may be more flexible.
This is actually the second time I've had this type of error. The first time the disk was under warranty so I just had it replaced. Both were Seagate disks. I have six other Seagate disks that work fine, and one WD black disk that works well too. If I replace it I would prefer to try WD blue, but for some reason you can't get them in NZ, it's WD Green, WD Black, or Seagate Barracuda.
