External Seagate Hard Drive Suddenly has Weak Sectors, Errors

Bad sectors can be a sign of impending doom however I've had drives that lasted for years without any further problems after low level reformatting (actually writes zeros to the whole drive while marking the bad sectors as unusable) using the drive manufacturers tools. It's pretty much a gamble though if more damaged sectors show up then replace it.

How Do I Low-Level Format a SATA or ATA (IDE) Hard Drive? | Seagate Support US

Though given how cheap Drives are these days I'd personally these days just replace it.

Thank you everyone for the courtesy of your helpful replies.

I have already made the decision in replacing the drive - it is such a shame. I blew $300 on a WD Elements 8TB Desktop drive and a 5TB Seagate Backup Desktop drive. I read reviews on all the HDDs on Amazon and they all featured awful reviews about how the drive failed and failed again after only a few months, or even instantly. I know those just pop up as the top reviews because they are so critical, but I figured it doesn't even really matter which hard drive I go with at that point. I got the impression that they all must be pretty equal if they all average 4 - 4 and a half stars and all have similar bad reviews about failing.

Now there's a chance that one or both of the drives could fail within months or even years as well. I want a permanent fix for this! I want to have an HDD that will last a lifetime! It is too expensive spending hundreds of dollars like this only to end up throwing half of it away. I already have two 4TB HDDs, two 2TB HDDs, but it all never feels like enough... I'm afraid everything could just get zapped away if I have 2 of them hooked up to transfer data and they both malfunction.

Anyway, that's enough anxious venting. If anyone wants to post suggestions about maintaining the health of HDDs or which ones fail the least, that would be great.