Failing end-to-end-error on new drive

Question

I have a 1tb HD that has been assessed as having a failing end-to-end-error. Its powered on time is 5 months and 24 days. This seems like a very short life for a hard disk. Am I correct? How is such a thing possible? Could this be a false assessment?

My only thought as to how this could be is that something happened to the machine itself (kicked, dropped, etc), possible while running.

The hard disk is a Seagate Barracuda and runs windows7 ultimate 64bit I used Ubuntu's SMART Data & Self-Test for the assessment (Ubuntu 14.04 live).

The machine currently does not boot into Windows, hanging up on classpnp.sys There have been signs of impending hd doom in the past (mostly failure to boot on the first try).

Answer 1

If a hard drive self-test reports the drive failing, it's almost certainly correct (the false negative rate is non-negligible, so a drive that shows signs of failing and passes its self-test may well be failing, but the false positive rate is extremely low). If there are boot issues as well as the failed self-test, that means it's even more likely to be failing.

5 months is a short lifespan; however, it's perfectly plausible that a drive would fail in that timespan, due to quality control problems. Drives actually fail more often in their first year and a half than in the next year and a half, because there's a certain percentage of drives that have manufacturing defects, and those fail quickly (after some time, those drives have all failed, and failure rates drop until good drives start to fail with age).

If the computer was abused, that would also lead to drive failure, but if not, it's reasonably likely that your drive just had a manufacturing defect. It happens. That's why warranties exist; after you get what data you can off the drive, I'd make a warranty claim and get it replaced.