The p-Code Machine

I few weeks back, I ordered a new Seagate 1500GB, 32MB SATA drive (ST31500341AS, CC1H firmware). The first thing I did with this drive was DDing the disk surface from /dev/zero. After booting a Karmic Live CD the next day, it immediately began howling about SMART and the drives reallocated sectors (48 already). So I brought the disk back for RMA purposes, and got another disk back labelled “Seagate Certified Repaired Disk”, though the serial didn’t match, so it wasn’t mine. At first this disk seemed to work well, it survived the DDing from /dev/zero. However after two weeks of idling, and a single day of operation, reallocated sectors began popping up again… So here we go again…