See, there you go, I told you didn't I " I don't want to low level" well that is the only way to restore the drive, fair enough you feel you've had enough of it, but you don't want to low level, you don't want to rma, you want your money back, but I don't know if that is possible or not, normally with things like that unless you can go through the reseller you bought from and they refund you the law is normally you have to give the manufacturer a fair chance to put things right, that would be to rma it, if you rma it you will get a refurbed drive, and that will mean it's been flashed and low levelled, so why be further out in postage costs when you can do it yourself and not be missing a drive for weeks on end, sorry mate but that's just how it is, I don't make the rules and I can only advise you as best I can, hence why I suggested cleaning before wiping, at least run a chkdsk on it before you condemn it.
Seatools doesn't lie, although you can be forgiven for thinking so, what you have to remember is all those diagnostic programs like Tune and Sentinal are trying to sell you something, I have a Freeagent that Sentinal rates at 45% health, the drive itself passes Seatools and Windows doesn't report any faults whith it either, Tune gives it 60% health, so we have two free diagnostics that says it's ok, and two paid for ones that say it isn't, but both report different states, as for slowing down this isn't always the drive anyway, it can be a virus,fragmentation or the MB silicone going bad, and a whole host of other things as well, what you must not do is get paranoid because you've read this and that, all that will do is mean you'll have no faith to buy anything eventually, all manufacturer's suffer failures to some degree.
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DOING ANYTHING I HAVE SUGGESTED IS AT YOUR OWN RISK, NEITHER I NOR SEAGATE TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY, IT'S YOUR CHOICE TO DO WHAT YOU FEEL IS BEST FOR YOU
