Just make sure your drive has one of the firmware revisions that are affected, if you don't have the one that is affected you will most likely brick the drive.
Odds are you don't have an issue but I bricked a 350 GB Maxtor once and paid $25 for a one shot program that unbricked it online. It worked fairly quick too only took 45 minutes to crack.
I've been using my 1TB for a while now, not sure how to compare it since my previous was an IDE, 60GB, 7200 RPM, about 7 years ago.. or maybe longer... and it was finally showing wear and tear.
I'll look at them tools, and uh.. how would I check to see if it has what might be on the list of "bad settings" ?
from what i remember, there are tests there, if it doesn't fail in a basic test try doing an extensive test. if there is some sort of error message then i guess you need to backup your files and have your hd repaired or replaced
Have a similar thread on this one except i didn't think it was the hdd at first. Luckly I was able to back the hdd's data. It's not my drive but there does seem to be a rash of these issues recently with seagate.