I have a six-month-old 1TB Seagate drive formatted into 2 NTFS partitions, and the disk appeared to be failing with Windows dropping down from UDMA to PIO mode, reporting Delayed Write Errors, and hanging Explorer when browsing directories. My initial suspicion was that the disk was dying.
However, on further examination it appears that Ubuntu, which doesn't write to the volume frequently like Windows does, was able to read the disk properly and retrieve all the data intact, saving me from having to use an older backup. Finally, running the Seatools DOS diagnostic reported that the disk has no problems, ie. SMART errors and no bad sectors, apparently.
This, in combination with the relative youth of the disk, suggests that something else is broken. The cable? The PSU? The integrated disk controller? But what would be a good way to diagnose the problem without risking damaging the data? I intend to extract the disk and try it in an external eSATA enclosure and see if the write errors cease, but in the event of the disk appearing to be fine, I would like to be able to confirm what part of the hardware is actually broken here in order to know just what needs replacing.
Are there any good ways to go about this?
