Ah that "Seagate Certified Repair" sticker or sort of, need to take my PC off sometimes this week to have a look if it really has that sticker (didn't notice ), my previous portable 320GB Seagate does has that "Seagate Certified Repair".
I already have 2 out of 3 of my 2TB Samsung sent for RMA (1 in 2011, 1 in 2012), HD204UI some more... HD203WI still running, hopefully no problem.

Bad sectors symptom, use SMART to check for keywords "sector" or just post the SMART result here if you don't know what they do, some attributes are only for information.
You can use a software call Low Level Format or similar disk wipe tool to perform deep "clean" of the disk, sometimes it may fix the "Pending sector count", means it's temporary issue, if "Reallocated sector count" increases then prepare to scrape your HDD, the surface is already damaged beyond repair.

You already answered your own question so yes, SSD for OS and some programs, little games if you like your games to load faster, normal HDD for storing huge files (picture, music, video, etc.) which does not really require speedy load time.
Normal user only needs 128GB for daily usage including programs & documents as well.
Heavy gamer probably can go for 256GB if they needs to install plenty of games (current games is darn huge) and they can afford it.

You can try using data recovery software like Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery, etc.
There's some free one out there using Hiren's BootCD bundles.
You can try to wipe it using the WD included diagnose software, can't remember what's the program's name though. Something to do with disk wipe.

You can try disk wipe software (Low Level Format is one of it) to wipe the disk clean to manufacturer default settings then start align/create partition from there.
If this fail could means the surface is damage beyond repair or the controller itself is fried/corrupted. This is the EOL, nothing you can do other than RMA or paper weight.

If you have space for another hard disk then you can backup to another and send current faulty for warranty, otherwise as normal warranty procedure, you won't get your data back even it just repair the parts not holding the data.

What's your budget of spending on these? And what capacity are you looking at?
Those play big different in setting up your personal storage, be it USB or NAS.
If you want to go cheap, you can buy 2 USB storage and have them copy the same thing but more works to be done since you're copying twice but this save you from paying another amount for NAS, NAS can range from RM300~600 for 2 bays depends on the brand and model you choose.

No budget, so you can spend extra right? Then go for RAID1 setup with 2x 2TB, any NAS should be suitable for you.
But the external USB HDD can be handy as well for extra backup purpose, RAID1 simply mirror what you have on to both HDD so if there's any mistake or unnatural disaster (virus, accidental delete, etc.) then your data is "bye-bye", so keeping "extra" backup is always a good practice if you value your data.
RAID1 only useful if you afraid of losing data "on-the-fly" (sudden HDD failure, bad sectors, etc.)

Hope this info helps you decide.

Give more detail on your desktop specs so more guru here can help you.
Good PSU can warrant longer HDD lifespan but sometimes it's just luck I guess
SSD however may also suffer for the same, possibly even worst when it comes to blackout/electric shock situation.
Buy good PSU, protected by a good UPS and your system may last longer than you possibly imagine.

p/s: Just like buying insurance for your home, car, and yourself, PC needs insurance as well.

PSU looks good, but I'm still not so sure about the input power source, home's electricity does play another role.
How old is your PSU?

Yes, you may writes zeroes to the HDD in case you need to protect your P&C stuff.
You may also check the SMART (HDDScan) after write zeroes to check for any "...sector" attribute value.
"Reallocated sector count", "Pending sector count", etc. These are few attribute that you need to have a lookout for, otherwise you can post your SMART result here and we all can have a look.

If you want performance, then Black series but beware of the temperature if your storage device or environment is not well ventilated or badly cooled.
Choose Red for 24/7 NAS usage, this is built especially for NAS purpose, withstand 24/7 use, minimal electricity and less heat compare to Black.

For boot drive, random access speed and latency play biggest role than sequential speed, Blue or better Black will provide better startup or application launch/access compare to Red or Green.
In the test, it's used for storage purpose only, as the sentence stated "ranging from single drive to 2, 5 and 8-bay Synology NAS deployments", they configure them all in a single NAS environment only. I hope that clears out your confusion.


Used as boot disk is not recommended.

This post has been edited by wildwestgoh: Oct 31 2013, 11:03 AM

Cable can be damaged as well if it's over bend or bend and stressed at a fixed position for long time, which is why there's 90 degree connector available to solve such issue, some mainboard even has side ports to minimize cable bending. Copper wire has its bending limits as well.

For those ultrabook which has no optical disk drive to convert to (caddy drive convert).
A very niche market, just like the SSHD (Hybrid disk drive).
Wonder how can the system differentiate them apart, single or dual drive?

Just found the review at StorageReview.
http://www.storagereview.com/wd_black2_ssd_hdd_review

Overall a nice product for some users but the price and the stability isn't ready for mass market as yet.

OEM are those batches that WDC made for other system builder or distributors such as Dell, HP, etc. that includes WDC hard disk with their system.
Those OEM hard disk come with cheaper price and of course you can't deal with WDC directly if there's any defect, you will need to refer to the system builders or distributors themselves for claiming warranty.
I'll prefer the retail version though, you can check if it's the retail unit or OEM unit by checking their warranty status on the spot if you have a smart phone with you (provided you can online).

For those external drives, they're packed with proper plastic or good looking boxes but not for those internal 3.5" drives that I have seen.
Best I have seen is Samsung internal drives and it also includes some screws.
Probably for the sake of cutting down the cost of producing the super-good-looking boxes or included accessories, that's why the internal drives that we bought usually only has simple static bag or just plastic shell (Samsung).
Either way still can check if it's under OEM or not, Seagate or WDC RMA check is good way to determine that.

This post has been edited by wildwestgoh: Dec 28 2013, 09:15 AM

At my local retails, the only and possible options is WDC, Seagate is over-sell, not sure why, the price different does not really justify it so I went for WDC (oh well.) but goes for the AV-GP only if available, 1 more year only cost RM20~30 more depends on supplier.

As for getting the OEM drives, erm... wonder if the seller is willing to give you the serial numbers for you to check its details at WDC support, just to make sure it's really OEM unit, and if it's OEM then you need to refer back to seller if there is any problem, quite risky I would say, you never know when will it fail and the seller already not more to be found by then.

AV-GP to run RAID5/10, erm, kinda risky setup since the drives is not intended for such, RED is designed for this instead.
As for the Made, lots of Seagate parts from Thailand as well, so it's all just darn luck. Constant monitoring and experience can really save lots of precious data; my WDC Black went dark after only 4 years, just suddenly the wallpaper appear corrupted, and then I cannot access the drive normally (really slow), I ran HDDScan and it's really a darn sectors, I quickly turn off the whole PC, unplug and buy a new HDD just to clone over all data (corrupted or not don't care first, just ignore!). Then used the WDC Diagnostic tools, wipe, scan, fail, RMA, that's it!

As for experience, I faced with 3 drives from Samsung before they acquired by Seagate (HD204UI), all have same situations, and forced me to buy new HDDs just to backup the data, lucky enough to copy them all before it went dark, talk about luck... wonder when will my luck end.
Oh, I think 1 did went dark before I can copy out the data, half way through and it just EOL, lucky the anime that I lost can be easily obtain through a darn good community (BakaBT) so I got back the 1.6TB in few months time... tough luck!!

As long as you don't use it for boot drive (install Windows, Linux, etc.), it's fine to use 3TB as a whole volume/partitions on any systems (legacy or new).
If you insist on use it for boot drive then you need to do some reading on 1024kbps posted links.

Unless you run enterprise server and data centre, I don't think you will ever utilize the full potential of that drive.
If you're using it at home for NAS or DVR that runs 24/7 then the normal Red or AV-GP will suits you well, both price and performance.
Again, "reliable" is very subjective even for highest class enterprise HDD, they'll break even they have 10 or 20 years of warranty, you'll still lose data if your redundancy breaks or have no/less backup solution.
Reliability will only come to play with redundancy with strong backup solutions (daily, hourly?) that you can afford.

I'll compare it with WDC Black and Green since both has marginal performance differences.
Black will definitely have higher transfer rate due to its higher spindle rate, let say 100MB/s (Black) vs 80MB/s (Green)
In terms of access performance, Black will always active and have much faster response, say 2~5ms (Black) vs 4~20ms (Green) depends on situation.
If you're looking at data transfer over network, then it has no different, due to the fact you may not max out the network capacity itself, Gbps network recommended in this case.
Depends on your needs, you may be looking at what would you put on the hard disk and what will you do with the data.

Can you still access the HDD?
If the drive can still be accessed even though it took very long time to reach one folder then you have high chances of retrieving your important data.
And mind elaborate your drive's status, "bad . backup and replace" seems too general, could be just SMART warning or bad sectors.