Hard Drive Failing?

[TitusVorenus]

I have an external drive (Seagate Momentus Thin, regular spinning platt, not SSD) in an enclosure that I use for large files that I don't like to keep on my MacBook Pro because they clog the hard drive. Today the drive started freezing when I was moving files to it, and then wouldn't unmount. Disk Utility, after 3-4 tries, would label it "repaired", then it would freeze again when I tried writing data to it.

I already backed up all the data, so I'm not worried about that, just trying to decide if I should get rid of the drive or continue to use it after a reformat.

Is there a decent utility that can do a deep dive and tell me if the drive is failing or isolate the bad sectors? Or is it better just to discard this one?

 

[Fishrrman]

What I would do:

1. Get important data OFF OF the drive. You've already done that.
2. Use Disk Utility to ERASE the drive to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled.
3. Run DU's "repair disk" function on it. Do you get "a good report"?
4. If you do, REPEAT the repair disk function FIVE TIMES in succession.
5. Do you get a good report every time?
6. If so, I'd use the drive for non-critical storage, or keep it backed up frequently.