Comment 140 for bug 438136

Dhruva: the problem you are reporting sounds like you do have a problem with the drive and libatasmart is reporting the issue correctly - so this is not the issue that is reported in this bug.

Regarding your actual problem, as you had escalating problems with an old drive and now have an escalating problem with a new drive, I would guess that your problem is not the drive but something else. I don't think the problem is that Ubuntu is corrupting the drive as it doesn't seem likely that it has that capability and there is no one else with a similar experience. I would think that you have another hardware problem that causes disks to fail - either insufficient cooling or vibration problems are the most likely issues. I suggest you contact someone with appropriate knowledge to help you resolve this problem.