Worried about high load/unload cycles

[leodragons]

Hey guys, this is my first post here, so I got this drive very cheap about a month ago, it does what I need it to do, when I initially got it, I plugged it in via USB and it behaved normally, but when I plugged it to the SATA port on my motherboard it started ticking away, with the HDD activity light coming up with every tick, ticks would also stop whenever I accessed something in the drive, since at the time I wasn't aware this could be a point of failure I just let it go since it didn't sound like a click of death and there wasn't much help in googling, now I see my load/unload cycles have skyrocketed since it was plugged into SATA (over a one month period).

I used seachest to disable everything power saving, disabled everything that would power off the drive in windows. The ticking sounds less aggressive now but it's still there.

According to Seagate's manual i'm way past their rated 300k load/unload cycles, the drive started at 60K cycles and now sits at over 600k.

Could someone point me to how to have this HDD live a normal life until I can do something and maybe replace it? At the moment finding a HDD for a reasonable price is a difficult task. So I'm thinking about retiring it to store some data as an external (cold) drive and have it remain powered off while in storage.

Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

Code:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(03) ST14000VE0008-2L3103
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
           Model : ST14000VE0008-2L3103
        Firmware : EV02
   Serial Number : ZL2CL5V9
       Disk Size : 14000,5 GB (8,4/137,4/14000,5/14000,5)
     Buffer Size : Unknown
     Queue Depth : 32
    # of Sectors : 27344764928
   Rotation Rate : 7200 RPM
       Interface : Serial ATA
   Major Version : ACS-4
   Minor Version : ----
   Transfer Mode : SATA/600 | SATA/600
  Power On Hours : 13461 hours
  Power On Count : 128 count
     Temperature : 40 C (104 F)
   Health Status : Good
        Features : S.M.A.R.T., NCQ, Streaming, GPL
       APM Level : ----
       AAM Level : ----
    Drive Letter : E:

-- S.M.A.R.T. --------------------------------------------------------------
ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name
01 _80 _64 _44 00000574C7B3 Read Error Rate
03 _87 _86 __0 000000000000 Spin-Up Time
04 _98 _98 _20 0000000009DE Start/Stop Count
05 100 100 _10 000000000000 Reallocated Sectors Count
07 _76 _60 _45 0000028B9FDD Seek Error Rate
09 _85 _85 __0 000000003495 Power-On Hours
0A 100 100 _97 000000000000 Spin Retry Count
0C 100 100 _20 000000000080 Power Cycle Count
12 100 100 _50 000000000000 Vendor Specific
BB 100 100 __0 000000000000 Reported Uncorrectable Errors
BC 100 _45 __0 01CF01CF01CF Command Timeout
BE _60 _41 _40 00002A1A0028 Airflow Temperature
C0 100 100 __0 00000000002C Power-off Retract Count
C1 __1 __1 __0 00000009457F Load/Unload Cycle Count
C2 _40 _59 __0 000F00000028 Temperature
C5 100 100 __0 000000000000 Current Pending Sector Count
C6 100 100 __0 000000000000 Uncorrectable Sector Count
C7 200 200 __0 000000000000 UltraDMA CRC Error Count
C8 100 100 __1 000000000000 Write Error Rate
F0 100 253 __0 7272000019A0 Head Flying Hours
F1 100 253 __0 000769313D7A Total Host Writes
F2 100 253 __0 000372EC034F Total Host Reads

-- IDENTIFY_DEVICE ---------------------------------------------------------
        0    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9
000: 0C5A 3FFF C837 0010 0000 0000 003F 0000 0000 0000
010: 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 5A4C 3243 4C35 5639
020: 0000 0000 0000 4556 3032 2020 2020 5354 3134 3030
030: 3056 4530 3030 382D 324C 3331 3033 2020 2020 2020
040: 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 8010 4000 2F00
050: 4000 0200 0200 0007 3FFF 0010 003F FC10 00FB 5D10
060: FFFF 0FFF 0000 0007 0003 0078 0078 0078 0078 0008
070: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 001F 8D0E 0046 00CC 0040
080: 0FE0 FFFF 306B 7561 6173 3069 B441 6173 407F 8276
090: 8276 0000 FFFE 0000 FE00 1000 0000 0000 2710 0000
100: 0000 5DE0 0006 0000 0000 0000 6003 0000 5000 C500
110: C86E 4260 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 43DE
120: 409C 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0029 0000
130: 5DE0 0000 5DE0 2020 0002 0140 0100 5000 3C06 3C0A
140: 0000 003C 0000 0008 0000 0000 FDFF 0280 0000 0470
150: 0008 0000 0000 1EB3 0000 8008 0000 02B5 BC00 8048
160: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0002 0000
170: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
180: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
190: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
200: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 50BD 0000 0000 4000
210: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 1C20 0000 0000
220: 0000 0000 11FF 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
230: 0000 5DE0 0006 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
240: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
250: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 37A5

-- SMART_READ_DATA ---------------------------------------------------------
     +0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +A +B +C +D +E +F
000: 0A 00 01 0F 00 50 40 B3 C7 74 05 00 00 00 03 03
010: 00 57 56 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 32 00 62 62 DE
020: 09 00 00 00 00 00 05 33 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00
030: 00 00 07 0F 00 4C 3C DD 9F 8B 02 00 00 00 09 32
040: 00 55 55 95 34 00 00 00 00 00 0A 13 00 64 64 00
050: 00 00 00 00 00 00 0C 32 00 64 64 80 00 00 00 00
060: 00 00 12 0B 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 BB 32
070: 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 BC 32 00 64 2D CF
080: 01 CF 01 CF 01 00 BE 22 00 3C 29 28 00 1A 2A 00
090: 00 00 C0 32 00 64 64 2C 00 00 00 00 00 00 C1 32
0A0: 00 01 01 7F 45 09 00 00 00 00 C2 22 00 28 3B 28
0B0: 00 00 00 0F 00 00 C5 12 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00
0C0: 00 00 C6 10 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C7 3E
0D0: 00 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C8 23 00 64 64 00
0E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 F0 00 00 64 FD A0 19 00 00 72
0F0: 72 14 F1 00 00 64 FD 7A 3D 31 69 07 00 00 F2 00
100: 00 64 FD 4F 03 EC 72 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
110: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
120: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
130: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
140: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
150: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
160: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 82 00 37 02 00 7B
170: 03 00 01 00 01 FF 02 EA 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
180: 00 00 05 00 BB 06 00 00 00 0D 0D 0D 0D 0D 0D 0D
190: 0D 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00
1A0: 00 00 00 00 07 06 00 00 AD D9 EA 38 13 2C 00 00
1B0: 00 00 00 00 01 00 07 0B 7A 3D 31 69 07 00 00 00
1C0: 4F 03 EC 72 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1D0: 01 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 7E 0E 00 00 01 00 00 00
1E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 02
1F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 14 19 00 00 00 4C

-- SMART_READ_THRESHOLD ----------------------------------------------------
     +0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +A +B +C +D +E +F
000: 01 00 01 2C 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00
010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 14 00 00 00 00
020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
030: 00 00 07 2D 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 00
040: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0A 61 00 00 00 00
050: 00 00 00 00 00 00 0C 14 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
060: 00 00 12 32 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 BB 00
070: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 BC 00 00 00 00 00
080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 BE 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
090: 00 00 C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C1 00
0A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C2 00 00 00 00 00
0B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 C5 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0C0: 00 00 C6 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C7 00
0D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C8 01 00 00 00 00
0E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 F0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0F0: 00 00 F1 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 F2 00
100: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
110: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
120: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
130: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
140: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
150: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
160: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
170: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
180: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
190: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1C0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0E