Is my brand new drive defective?

Yes it's defective send it back.

Contact Dell - since it's brand new they may be willing to replace it.
I run tests on all my new hard drives I buy to ensure they aren't DOA or have issues before I put it into my systems. If I find even a single error, it goes back for exchange.

Argh, dell is closed on weekend

and the story unfolds. I just did a chkdsk I: /r and it went through, said a bunch of stuff like "Adding 323 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File." and now back in sentinel, it's reporting 12% health! What theee!

"The drive found 248 bad sectors during its self test.
There are 248 weak sectors found on the disk surface. They may be remapped any time in the later use of the disk.
67 errors occured during data transfer. This may indicate problem of the device or with data/power cables. It is recommended to examine and replace the cables if possible.
It is recommended to examine the log of the disk regularly. All new problems found will be logged there.

It is recommended to backup immediately to prevent data loss."

How does a brand new disk, that did have the default seagate stuff on it, be this... poor?

I do need a 2TB drive and this one was most recommended by wirecutter. Plus the small size/weight of it was nice. I don't know if I should return it and find something else, or exchange?

Run Seatools on it to make sure.
Since it's new you're going to be dealing with Dell instead of Seagate anyway, but this way you have the manufacturer's diagnostic tools report.

If you just bought it, it's within dell's responsibility to replace right away cause it's defective, and will continue to degrade the more you use it. If you go past the usual month from purchase then it's Seagate's responsibility which means mailing them your drive. Hard drives tend to fail a lot so if you got a bad apple just replace it

I was going to say run Hard Disk Sentinel but you've already done that. I'm not surprised at a DOA drive; I've seen one myself, also a Seagate backup slim, I believe. Anyway, if I needed an external HDD, I'd get an enclosure and a HDD and put it together. It's definitely not the cheapest option, but you get to control the parts.

I highly recommend these Inateck enclosures:
https://www.amazon.ca/Inateck-Inch-Driv ... 00FCLG65U/
https://www.amazon.ca/Inateck-External- ... 00N0QZTQQ/

They use a USB 3.0 type A connector on both ends instead of USB 3.0 micro type B connector found on most other enclosures. Also, I probably lucked out, but I did drop my external drive with one of these enclosures onto the sidewalk from about 4 feet high, and the drive's health is still at 100%.

Possible damage from shipping or missed as part of quality control.
Stop using the drive, it will eventually fail.

If you can exchange/return it, do so.

Otherwise you'll have to RMA it in Mississauga. If you tell Seagate that your ran Seatools and it came up with some failure, they will send you instructions on how to send it back. Otherwise you'll have to go through the longer process of talking to a tech and troubleshooting a bunch of stuff and taking more time to get processed.

I would go for WD, Toshiba, or Hitatchi instead of Seagate. And always with external drives, make sure it's backed up because external drives are more prone to failure due to bumping and abuse while traveling with it compared to an internal drive.

tmpz wrote: ↑ I would go for WD, Toshiba, or Hitatchi instead of Seagate. And always with external drives, make sure it's backed up because external drives are more prone to failure due to bumping and abuse while traveling with it compared to an internal drive.

but I trusted wirecutter for their review/recommendation of the slim ... argh!

Kaitlyn wrote: ↑ but I trusted wirecutter for their review/recommendation of the slim ... argh!

You could exchange and try it again.

tmpz wrote: ↑
I would go for WD, Toshiba, or Hitatchi instead of Seagate.

Any particular reason?

Unless we're using anecdotal evidence again in which case the 3 drives you recommend are literally my last failures in reverse order of last drives to fail for me.
Just had a Hitachi go, Toshiba died a few months ago, and WD just before that.

So based on my own personal experiences I 100% recommend Seagate over everything else.
In fact... I've bet my entire storage array on it.
110 drives in total.

EDIT: Oh I forgot about the other random drives that are also Seagate.
Counting those I'm probably up to 130 or since I have a bunch of 2.5" as well as a few 8TBs.

Outside of that bad batch of Samsungs I think I've actually had more WD fails on me than Seagates....

Kaitlyn wrote: ↑ but I trusted wirecutter for their review/recommendation of the slim ... argh!

Doesn't mean anything. A certain small percentage of drives from ALL manufacturers are essentially DOA. Hard drives are made overseas and there's a long transportation supply chain to go through before they get into your hands. As well as they are designed and packaged to absorb shocks some of them just won't make it. Your crappy luck with this shipment. Get a replacement.

Good info here:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-dri ... s-q2-2016/

inhaliburton wrote: ↑ Good info here:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-dri ... s-q2-2016/

That's a whole other can of worms.
Plus they only list desktop drives, not portable ones.

But they're about the best source of publicly available data.
It's not a great source, but it's the best that we have.