> 1.) What does the first Reinitialize disk surface test result mean?
> If the drive was unmounted during testing, that should mean that the computer isn't accessing the
> drive at any point, so it shouldn't be affecting testing speed, correct?
Yes, this is absolutely true. As the drive was unmounted during the test, it is not accessed by the OS (or any other software running) so they should not cause troubles in the measuring of the performance.
I suspect the generic slowness may be caused by some other activity of the system which may affected the performance indirectly, without accessing this particular hard disk. I mean that if some operations used on a difference device which may shared the bandwidth (for example a different USB drive if this one also connected on the USB line) then the bandwidth may be shared between the devices and this may caused that some areas seemed slower during the test.
Personally I'd do exactly what you did: repeat the test, just to verify if I see the same problem, the same areas slower - or not.
(Personally I usually perform these tests 2-3 times, test some drives even for a week in 24/7 mode, just to confirm that they are *really* perfect before putting any kind of sensitive data on them).
As the repeated test showed absolutely no slowness, no darker blocks - and also the other tests also passed, I'd be comfortable to use the drive.
To be sure, I'd use with constant monitoring by Hard Disk Sentinel of course to be notified about any (even minor) change in health
And also the Disk -> Short self test, Disk -> Extended self test options are available any time as they are 100% safe.
> 2.) Included below is a screenshot of the Raw read error rate:
This is completely normal.
This high value does not mean the number of errors, but means the total number of read operations performed by the Seagate drive.
This is why it is called "error rate" (instead of error count) - because changing this value to very high does not indicate problems (it would incdicate problems differently, by the "Value" and "Threshold" columns).
Of course I can confirm that if there would be a real error, Hard Disk Sentinel would surely
- report in the text description
- show the degradation health value
- it would be detected by Disk -> Short self test or Disk -> Extended self test
- the Disk -> Surface test -> Read test could not be completed without problems
If you are interested in further information about this, please check this forum topic:
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=735&p=973#p973
> 3.) Would you feel comfortable using this drive in a moderate use, 5 year backup installation?
Yes, absolutely after these tests and the results.
