Well, if it is in warranty then by all means do an RMA.
Depending on where you bought it, a simple store return might work too.
Either way you should get a disk that’s trouble-free.
HDD’s are complex beasts and full of all sorts mechanical and electronic engineering breakthroughs. There are physics involved that even the best scientists don’t fully understand - just know that it works. HDD’s have also been around for 50 years in some form or other. The first HDD was the RAMAC from IBM, made in the 1950’s. It needed a forklift to transport and stored just a couple of megs. Today, we have a highly refined and miniaturized product that can essentially be treated like a black box, requiring no user intervention in day-to-day operation.
For example, I’m certainly not going to recommend messing around with utilities and 10-hour scans full of technical mumbo-jumbo for the 17-yr old college kid that just wants to save schoolwork and youtube videos. Same thing with the non-technical housewife that just wants to save pictures of the kids. To them, an external HDD is a magic black box that holds things. If it isnt working, get a new one. And a properly operating disk should not need any special care or tricks. Just put the files on it and you’re done.
Anything beyond a simple undelete program like Recuva and the occasional Windows Defrag operation is all that anyone should ever need for maintaining disks. Even chkdsk is getting close to being technical in nature.
But to the technical hobbyist all these utilities and scanners and benchmarks are great fun! To them I say have at it!
So you decide how much time and effort you want to sped with this project.
