IMO this was common in the past because inbox quotas were very small. With many services only allowing users to have ~10-100MB it was critical to delete things (especially attachments).

When Gmail launched in 2004, providing 1GB of mail storage, gradually increasing to 15GB today, people's habits changed. That said, my university email almost a decade later still had a 100MB quota and it was very painful.

I just don't want to buy a whole role of tape I'll only use a sliver of.

For a quick test, I would be willing to cover the pin with regular scotch tape. Some people do remove the pin entirely, but I just use Kapton tape because it is reversible if needed.

If you have a Molex -> SATA power adapter cable, those will also sever the problematic 3.3V line.

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My suspicion is The Lizard People

I checked bandcamp and they only have the FLACs for their music up to 2017

Strange. Perhaps they stopped making FLACs, but ... why.

Would it be possible to contact the artist & ask if they can post more FLAC to Bandcamp?

Try CrystalDiskInfo or WD Data Lifeguard.

That way you can check if the SMART data is really wrong, or just Seatools has a mistake.