expired Posted by DesertGardener | Staff • May 13, 2024
May 13, 2024 7:35 PM
Item 1 of 6
Item 1 of 6
expired Posted by DesertGardener | Staff • May 13, 2024
May 13, 2024 7:35 PM
14TB WD Ultrastar DC HC530 SATA 6G 3.5" 7200 RPM Enterprise HDD (Refurbished) $110 + Free Shipping
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4. SMART data definitely had been wiped by sellers/refurbishers.
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HC530s were launched around 6 years ago now, so these drives could potentially have over 50k hours on em. Personally, I wouldn't buy 6 year old drives at this price. I'd want to see hours or mfg date. Around 3-4 years or 30k hours at $8/TB would be reasonable. If these are 50k hours or 5-6 years, I'd want something closer to $6/TB.
No warranty. It's a used drive sold by an electronics recycler.
Usually, "refurbished" indicates that SMART was wiped. "Used" usually means that it's still there. YMMV though, it certainly goes the other way around sometimes.
For goHardDrive I see Refurbished and used-very good selling under different prices, what's the difference?
Also, does this have the same 5 year warranty that's on ebay?
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HC530s were launched around 6 years ago now, so these drives could potentially have over 50k hours on em. Personally, I wouldn't buy 6 year old drives at this price. I'd want to see hours or mfg date. Around 3-4 years or 30k hours at $8/TB would be reasonable. If these are 50k hours or 5-6 years, I'd want something closer to $6/TB.
No warranty. It's a used drive sold by an electronics recycler.
Usually, "refurbished" indicates that SMART was wiped. "Used" usually means that it's still there. YMMV though, it certainly goes the other way around sometimes.
1. Manufacturer refurbished - The OEM (in this case WD) takes the drive in and it is usually an infant mortality (fault within 2 years). They electrically bench test it, do rigorous tests, and since they have the enterprise keys reset the drive SMART data. They then typically put it to the channel and either have a smaller or no warranty (2-3 years) or said channel will extend to 5 years because these are relatively new drives.
2. Seller refurbished - This really means nothing other than a pulled drive or faulted drive out of manu warranty is brought to them they provide some level or retest and then are free to sell it with their OWN warranty. Most of the time they CANNOT wipe the SMART data because enterprise drives have encrypted firmware and if you get one that is SMART reset it may be an OOS drive and not kosher.
3. OOS drive - Out of spec drive. This drive failed OEM bench retest but was deemed OK for consumer usage (not commercial). In most cases the drives may have cosmetic issues or one of the calibrations are out of spec. They can also be drives EOSL (end of support). They do not typically have surface defects as this would be stupid to sell as warranty claims would be high. In this case they put a special OOS firmware on it which is not upgradable although some people have been able to flash OEM vendor fw which is where I believe if you get a many refurb zeroed out is the likely case. An example of OOS drives is the MDD sub-brand which is gohardrive and usually exos drives. They often come w/ 3 or 5 year warranty.
When I worked for large storage company many of the faulted pulls were either firmware bugs or the array SW faulted the drive because of some anomaly, power issue, or array fw/sw issue. Also many vendors/clients have regional spares or onsite spares which sit there for years unused. These are the treasures. When bench tested the drives were physically OK. If there is a physical issue the drive is either marked OOS or scrapped, refurbishment for drives is bench testing/fw these days only. In the old days they may replace the external circuit board or replace faulty resistors/etc but I don't think anyone does that these days as the bench cost would exceed the resell price.
My concern w/ these older drives 5+ years is the AFR does go up dramatically but if infrequently used they can go into consumer service for many years if kept cool and not heavily used. Of course you pay 25-35% of the price of new, so why not just practice 3-2-1. I bought a 14TB MDD drive for kicks and beat the heck out of it on my own bench test and it came out just fine. It is a Seagate X18 Exos, and has a 5 year warranty and serves as one of my backup drives. For the price and warranty why not. Its not serving my main files which and manu refurb HDS HC530 which were a little over a year old when I got them (on serial lookup). I paid $140 for those 5 year warranty and again I have backup so in all you can pay for redundancy do it and you can have a solid system for low cost.
So typically the price works like:
1. Retail -> OEM -> Overstock -> Manu recert -> Third party "recert" -> OOS -> You are on your own drive
IMHO if its vendor/TP recert or lower and doesn't have a 5 year warranty I would skip it because to move up may only be $10-$20 more and is small insurance to pay for 5 years for an older/marginal drive which will likely fault in that window.
SMART data was not wiped, I was able to read off the following specs.
These drives are less than 5 years of usage, the hours are between 40-50k with about 100-200 power cycle.
These drives are rated at 2.5 millions hours, and comes with 5 years warranty... so at minimum you will get 5 years out of them.
You are essentially paying 1/3 of the price vs MSRP for these, so it's a good deal (I think the 12T drives was a better deal.
I got 2 out of 6 that had more than 5 bad sectors... they are easy to return and get good replacement from the seller, highly recommended.
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Now, it wouldn't surprise me if somewhere along the line someone was printing fake labels, but I just don't really see the profit motive to do that over wiping SMART.
But yeah, at the end of the day, I just chase lowest $/TB and $/hours. Redundant arrays and backups take care of any failures.