expired Posted by tDames | Staff • May 29, 2023
May 29, 2023 6:56 PM
Item 1 of 7
Item 1 of 7
expired Posted by tDames | Staff • May 29, 2023
May 29, 2023 6:56 PM
18TB Seagate Exos X18 7200RPM 3.5" Internal Enterprise Hard Drive (Recertified)
+ Free Shipping$185
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If you're going to buy from them, I'd suggest going with the WD/Hitachi Ultrastar. Seagate drives just seem too failure prone. It's not unusual to find them selling the WD drives for the same price as the Seagates. I've seen them sell 18TB Ultrastars for $185.
Be aware that some WD drives have the Power Disable feature, which makes them harder to use with many power supplies. SPD is nice, in that they include a SATA power adapter and a small strip of Kapton tape. I'd use the Kapton tape, as that style of power adapter has been known to spontaneously catch fire. Or, avoid the issue altogether and buy a model that does not have the Power Disable feature. You can tell which drives have it by the second-to-last digit of the model number. If it's a "0" it has the Power Disable feature. If it's an "L" (Legacy) it does not have the feature, so you won't have to worry about it.
Also, be aware that these are all enterprise class drives. They will be louder than consumer drives, especially the seeks. How bad it is seems to depend greatly on the case it's mounted in. Vibration dampening mounts make a HUGE difference. If directly mounted to a metal drive cage, be prepared for earthquakes. The Seagates may be a tiny bit louder than the WDs. Also, despite being of similar design, the WD Ultrastars have significantly louder and faster seeks than the ones they stick in the Easystore/Elements line.
If you wish to adjust advanced features, you may want to become acquainted with Seagate's SeaChest utilities (not to be confused with SeaTools). I have not been able to find a comparable utility from WD. Luckily, many of the SeaChest utilities also work with the WD drives.
One major reason I bring this up is because they can be used to adjust power management settings. The Exos line does not support conventional APM (Advanced Power Management) which is what most generic utilities adjust. The Exos drives support EPC (Extended Power Condition) and Seagate's PowerBalance. I find the defaults a bit too aggressive. You can use one of the SeaChest utilities to adjust the timers for reduced drive electronics, head parking, reduced spindle speed, and complete spindown. I think the first two are the only ones enabled by default.
The WD Ultrastars support both APM and EPC. The SeaChest utility does seem to be able to adjust EPC (and presumably APM) settings on the Ultrastars. Interestingly, it does not work on shucked Easystore/Elements drives, despite reporting the settings as both changeable and saveable.
Both drives support TLER/ERC. By default, it is enabled on the Exos, with a 10 second timeout. Oddly, the WD Ultrastar seems to have it disabled. Even more oddly, the Easystore/Elements drives have it enabled, with a 7 second timeout. It can be enabled/disabled or adjusted on all of them. Unfortunately, the settings do not seem to persist through power cycles.
As others have noted, the packaging is phenomenal. Also, the SMART data is wiped and some (maybe all) only show the recertification date, not the original manufacture date.
Anyway, those are my comments. I know that's probably way more than most people care about.
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Been a lot of them on here recently…
Price is tempting, anything we need to know about them if we pop on a few?
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank legioni15
Been a lot of them on here recently…
Price is tempting, anything we need to know about them if we pop on a few?
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank MWink
Been a lot of them on here recently…
Price is tempting, anything we need to know about them if we pop on a few?
If you're going to buy from them, I'd suggest going with the WD/Hitachi Ultrastar. Seagate drives just seem too failure prone. It's not unusual to find them selling the WD drives for the same price as the Seagates. I've seen them sell 18TB Ultrastars for $185.
Be aware that some WD drives have the Power Disable feature, which makes them harder to use with many power supplies. SPD is nice, in that they include a SATA power adapter and a small strip of Kapton tape. I'd use the Kapton tape, as that style of power adapter has been known to spontaneously catch fire. Or, avoid the issue altogether and buy a model that does not have the Power Disable feature. You can tell which drives have it by the second-to-last digit of the model number. If it's a "0" it has the Power Disable feature. If it's an "L" (Legacy) it does not have the feature, so you won't have to worry about it.
Also, be aware that these are all enterprise class drives. They will be louder than consumer drives, especially the seeks. How bad it is seems to depend greatly on the case it's mounted in. Vibration dampening mounts make a HUGE difference. If directly mounted to a metal drive cage, be prepared for earthquakes. The Seagates may be a tiny bit louder than the WDs. Also, despite being of similar design, the WD Ultrastars have significantly louder and faster seeks than the ones they stick in the Easystore/Elements line.
If you wish to adjust advanced features, you may want to become acquainted with Seagate's SeaChest utilities (not to be confused with SeaTools). I have not been able to find a comparable utility from WD. Luckily, many of the SeaChest utilities also work with the WD drives.
One major reason I bring this up is because they can be used to adjust power management settings. The Exos line does not support conventional APM (Advanced Power Management) which is what most generic utilities adjust. The Exos drives support EPC (Extended Power Condition) and Seagate's PowerBalance. I find the defaults a bit too aggressive. You can use one of the SeaChest utilities to adjust the timers for reduced drive electronics, head parking, reduced spindle speed, and complete spindown. I think the first two are the only ones enabled by default.
The WD Ultrastars support both APM and EPC. The SeaChest utility does seem to be able to adjust EPC (and presumably APM) settings on the Ultrastars. Interestingly, it does not work on shucked Easystore/Elements drives, despite reporting the settings as both changeable and saveable.
Both drives support TLER/ERC. By default, it is enabled on the Exos, with a 10 second timeout. Oddly, the WD Ultrastar seems to have it disabled. Even more oddly, the Easystore/Elements drives have it enabled, with a 7 second timeout. It can be enabled/disabled or adjusted on all of them. Unfortunately, the settings do not seem to persist through power cycles.
As others have noted, the packaging is phenomenal. Also, the SMART data is wiped and some (maybe all) only show the recertification date, not the original manufacture date.
Anyway, those are my comments. I know that's probably way more than most people care about.
I have four 14TB and four 18TB from them now. All tested fine. It's a good 10-days for (each drive in) my torture test. I haven't found a need to purchase a mechanical drive from anywhere else so far, and their shipping boxes are good to store sets of drives offline too. They're good protection, and much cheaper than the Orico 20-drive cases I also use.
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In my experience, both the Seagate Exos and WD/Hitachi Ultrastars run neither especially hot or cool.
Been a lot of them on here recently…
Price is tempting, anything we need to know about them if we pop on a few?
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank nobody2000
Been a lot of them on here recently…
Price is tempting, anything we need to know about them if we pop on a few?
Normally I appreciate refurbished and recertified merchandise. It means it was returned, fixed (if it was needed), but more importantly, inspected. These left the door with more scrutiny than their brand-new counterparts.
For HDDs, however, I found them to be prone to early failure. It was never worth the money I was saving, mainly, because it resulted in me losing a lot of data (that luckily was usually backed up online, but not always).
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank DaLasNinja
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These guys really pack the drives well. My 3 drives came sealed in the antistatic bag, sandwiched in foam holders meant for 5 drives, in a box, bubbled wrapped inside another box.
Another plus is that no sales tax for NY. I would buy from them in a heartbeat. Awfully tempted to upgrade the drives in my TrueNas... must resist.