It appears to work fine (it contains my home partition for my main machine I daily drive) and I haven’t noticed signs of failure. Not noticeably slow either. I used to boot Windows off of it once upon a time which was incredibly slow to start up, but I haven’t noticed slowness since using it for my home partition for my personal files.
Articles online seem to suggest the life expectancy for an HDD is 5–7 years. Should I be worried? How do I know when to get a new drive?
Who knows. A few years ago my main drive (seagate 1TiB 10kRPM) exploded in use. It was only 4 years old. The company I sent it to for recovery told me all was left of the disks was dust. I live my life thinking it might happen again any time. This means regular backups (backupS plural).
My father also had a Seagate he kept old family photos on that just unexpectedly died. Their stuff is trash.
I mean, all hard drives are expected to die.
Sorry about your photos though. My boomer dad made the same mistake.