The Seagate Barracuda ES.2 was released in 2008 and production ran until the end of 2010. The series was replaced by the Seagate Constellation ES. Beware of merchants selling ST31000340NS, ST3750330NS, or ST3500320NS drives as "new bulk" or "new pulls." When buying any SATA drive that is not factory sealed, be sure to ask the vendor about the drive SMART statistics. Observe all the failure points monitored by SMART in the image below. The drive we tested was advertised as "new bulk" when, clearly, it has been used extensively.
- New drives should have 0 reallocated sectors ("Grown Defects.")
- New drives should have under 10 Power On Hours (though not necessarily 0.)
- Any uncorrectable error is a sign of a failing drive. On Seagate disk drives, it is normal to see high seek error rates as the "raw value" is not an actual counter of errors. On any drive, ECC corrected errors are perfectly normal.
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