Reallocated Sector Count - Best Practices

jlehtinen wrote:
I've got a set of 6 Seagate ST3500514NS 500GB - each drive seems to pick up an additional reallocated sector every week or two. Some of them are up to around ~30 reallocated sectors at this point.

While not a happy story, it's probably too early to panic (though not too early to start planning for replacement i.e. a drive or two that rapidly degenerates >50, or has other errors).

Of my 4 drives, one did very early-on accelerate rapidly to about 25 reallocated sectors and I bought an identical backup. Over the following several years it picked-up 3 or 4 more bad sectors, one again very recently. The other 3 are still at zero.

I suspect one day that the drive will deteriorate at a pace that will tell me to replace it... I hope so anyway. My spare drive is still in its static-free bag awaiting that day.