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expired Posted by wordage • Mar 19, 2025
expired Posted by wordage • Mar 19, 2025

Refurb: 22TB MDD 7200RPM 256MB Cache 3.5" SATA Hard Drives w/ 5yr Warranty

+ Free Shipping

From $260

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goHardDrive Wholesale and Retail via eBay has various 22TB MDD 7200RPM 256MB Cache 3.5" SATA Hard Drives w/ 5yr Warranty (Excellent - Refurbished) Now-> from $259.95 each. Shipping is free.

Thanks to Community Member wordage for sharing this deal.

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Editor's Notes

Written by powerfuldoppler | Staff
  • Condition Notes: Factory Refurbished, 5 Years Warranty from Reseller. Zero Power Hours, Zero Bad Sectors. Like New Standard
  • Offer valid for a limited time only / while supplies last.
  • Prices from $11.82 per TB.

Original Post

Written by wordage
Community Notes
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Deal Details
Community Notes
About the Poster
goHardDrive Wholesale and Retail via eBay has various 22TB MDD 7200RPM 256MB Cache 3.5" SATA Hard Drives w/ 5yr Warranty (Excellent - Refurbished) Now-> from $259.95 each. Shipping is free.

Thanks to Community Member wordage for sharing this deal.

Available Options:

Editor's Notes

Written by powerfuldoppler | Staff
  • Condition Notes: Factory Refurbished, 5 Years Warranty from Reseller. Zero Power Hours, Zero Bad Sectors. Like New Standard
  • Offer valid for a limited time only / while supplies last.
  • Prices from $11.82 per TB.

Original Post

Written by wordage

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Top Comments

DrMASE
274 Posts
122 Reputation
22TB drives have not been in production 5 years. The earliest review I could find was from August 18, 2022 from a Western digital gold.

https://www.storagereview.com/rev...hdd-review

So less than 3 years use maximum.
huaqiangbei
1313 Posts
381 Reputation
Prices of refurbs tend to drop towards the end of the year as datacenters liquidate "aging" drives. That's what we saw last year, there was just a flood of cheap really good quality refurbs.
wordage
405 Posts
263 Reputation
These drives have like a 2 million hours MTBF rating... So even supposing 5 years in a data center:

5 years = 24 x 365 x 5 = 43,800 hours

This is only a fraction of the 2 million so these drives still have a lot to give!

Check over in https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ if you are concerned about factory-recertified enterprise-class drives.

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Original Poster
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Mar 20, 2025
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Mar 20, 2025
wordage
Original Poster
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Mar 20, 2025
405 Posts
Quote from wordage :
Gonna send you DMs with the codes I got becuse maybe they are one-time use. Whatever you don't use, send them to this thread in case anybody else is interested.
I just realized it is the same code for all three drive types when I was sending them to @spooky187. I told them to send the code back to this group if they do not intend on using it. Anyway, this extra $5 coupon is probably a YMMV since it look like a one-time use code.

UPDATE--yeah, the $5 coupon is DEFINITELY a YMMV. @spooky187 was not able to use the one I sent them--they got a "wrong code" error. I will update the original posting to say the extra $5 is a definite YMMV.
Last edited by wordage March 20, 2025 at 12:48 PM.
1
Mar 20, 2025
1,332 Posts
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Mar 20, 2025
qsub
Mar 20, 2025
1,332 Posts
Quote from PoppinPenelli :
In general enterprise drives have higher reliability and are a little bit faster. They are also usually a lot louder than NAS drives. That said the enterprise drives probably have higher usage and wear and tear. First thing you should do is do a full surface scan which may take a couple of days on 22GB.

I bought the enterprise WD drives from a past slickdeals from the same seller but from newegg last summer. Running them initially for testing in a Ugreen NAS but they've proven themselves so far.
Quote from PoppinPenelli :
In general enterprise drives have higher reliability and are a little bit faster. They are also usually a lot louder than NAS drives. That said the enterprise drives probably have higher usage and wear and tear. First thing you should do is do a full surface scan which may take a couple of days on 22GB.

I bought the enterprise WD drives from a past slickdeals from the same seller but from newegg last summer. Running them initially for testing in a Ugreen NAS but they've proven themselves so far.
Confirming on the louder. I bought this brand a couple years ago, if the drive is in a computer at my computer desk, I can hear it. It's sort of annoying to be honest but it is working perfectly fine still.
1
Mar 20, 2025
129 Posts
Joined Apr 2013
Mar 20, 2025
danheinz
Mar 20, 2025
129 Posts
I just bought two drives from these guys 3 weeks ago. Very happy, no issues
1
Mar 20, 2025
78 Posts
Joined Nov 2015
Mar 20, 2025
thePower777
Mar 20, 2025
78 Posts
I have 10% coupon which expires today. Send me dm if interested.
1
Mar 20, 2025
6,013 Posts
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Mar 20, 2025
redpoint5
Mar 20, 2025
6,013 Posts
I don't need storage at the moment, but I'm seeing a ton of warnings in Event Viewer saying the IO operation for Disk 2 was retired. That's got me looking for replacement drives.

Quote from MWink :
While I'm still a bit wary of those new HAMR drives (even ones with the Exos label), I would still pick them over any of these white label brands.
I'm wary of HAMR too. Are you saying these drives aren't HAMR?
Last edited by redpoint5 March 20, 2025 at 01:33 PM.
1
Mar 20, 2025
13 Posts
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Mar 20, 2025
WittyLinen458
Mar 20, 2025
13 Posts
Quote from TheUndertaker :
I can't fathom anyone who pays more than $10/TB for a used hard drive when you can buy new for $15/TB.I would consider $7.50/TB with the 5 yr warranty. Anything with a shorter warranty would make no sense.
If it wasn't enterprise grade I'd agree, but these drives are dang near bullet proof. The reliability is worth the increased price imo.
1
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Mar 20, 2025
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shippy
Pro
Mar 20, 2025
1,571 Posts
Quote from bullet2300 :
1 year warranty on a drive is rough. These have 5-year warranties. I'd prefer to stick with better warranty for my NAS!
Exactly! I have a WD 10tb i shucked 4y ago that died recently. 3y after the 1y warranty expired. I'm sticking to enterprise refurbished drives with a 5y warranty for now.
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Mar 20, 2025
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shippy
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Quote from jackharvest :
I have 8 x 8TB drives in my main nas. All the drives are in the 9 year old territory. I don't know how they're still functioning. I'm obviously happy, but terrified cause I clearly need to cycle these out to backupville, but can't because I can't find the ol' "8TB WD Red Pro new for $108" that were so prevalent nearly a decade ago. :\
Depending on your NAS, can you replace the smaller drives with larger, newer drives? In my DIY NAS, I'm using Snapraid so i can use any size drives i like as long as my parity drives are the largest. This makes it easy for me to upgrade older drives as needed
1
Mar 20, 2025
36 Posts
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sergey3
Mar 20, 2025
36 Posts
Quote from shippy :
Depending on your NAS, can you replace the smaller drives with larger, newer drives? In my DIY NAS, I'm using Snapraid so i can use any size drives i like as long as my parity drives are the largest. This makes it easy for me to upgrade older drives as needed

Yes you can always replace a drive with another drive of the same or larger capacity. In my nas, I replaced one drive at a time with larger capacity, waited for it to rebuild, then swapped out the second drive and waited for a rebuild. After that I was able to increase the capacity in the settings.
1
Mar 20, 2025
277 Posts
Joined Apr 2016
Mar 20, 2025
mikraphne
Mar 20, 2025
277 Posts
Who is the warranty through? A random eBay seller that can just go off the grid? Looks like they have been around for awhile, but still..
1
Mar 20, 2025
486 Posts
Joined Jun 2003
Mar 20, 2025
ryanbrancel
Mar 20, 2025
486 Posts
Have bought refurb MDD 14 TB for emulation storage and 2 of the 3 worked great. They were $110 at Amazon last year, though have gone up to $150 or so now.
1
Mar 20, 2025
2,799 Posts
Joined Feb 2007
Mar 20, 2025
hbk72777
Mar 20, 2025
2,799 Posts
Quote from TheUndertaker :
I can't fathom anyone who pays more than $10/TB for a used hard drive when you can buy new for $15/TB.
I would consider $7.50/TB with the 5 yr warranty. Anything with a shorter warranty would make no sense.

Because I'm getting a 5 year warranty instead of whatever WD employee I get decides to honor.

I just use drives like these to torrent/usenet, no personal info is stored, so I can send them back without worry
1
Mar 20, 2025
2,799 Posts
Joined Feb 2007
Mar 20, 2025
hbk72777
Mar 20, 2025
2,799 Posts
Quote from flangomango :
Depends on who is honoring the warranty. They could offer a 10
year warranty and it would not mean anything if they never plan to honor it.

I would not put much stock into a third party rebadger honoring such long warranties.

They've been on Ebay since 2005, they're not going anywhere
1
Mar 20, 2025
2,133 Posts
Joined Oct 2011
Mar 20, 2025
MWink
Mar 20, 2025
2,133 Posts
Quote from redpoint5 :
I don't need storage at the moment, but I'm seeing a ton of warnings in Event Viewer saying the IO operation for Disk 2 was retired. That's got me looking for replacement drives.

I'm wary of HAMR too. Are you saying these drives aren't HAMR?
The recent large (especially 24TB+) Seagate external drives appear to be HAMR. These 22TB MDD drives might not be, though I can't say that for sure. HAMR drives usually have a laser warning on them, but I don't know if MDD would even bother. Also, as far as I know, any CMR Seagate over 24TB is definitely HAMR.

If you're seeing warnings in Event Viewer, I'd definitely do some thorough diagnostics. Also, make sure you're looking at the right drive. I believe Windows labels the first drive as Disk 0, leading to some confusion.

Quote from wordage :
Thanks for pointing out this webepage. But I have to say that after reading it, I did not come to the same conclusion as you did... Regarding recertified drives, they say:

"Since the [recertified] drives has [sic] been tested twice by the test process we actually see lower return rates that [sic] we do for new drives."

And for whilte label drives, they say:

"The drive goes through the same test sequence as a recertified or new drive."

So how do you conclude that white label brands "are often selling some of the lowest binned drive." The webpage you pointed out does not say this anywhere. In fact, as I mentioned above, it says that white label drives undergo the same test process as recertified drives.

For those thinking that the zero hour on these recertified drives are simply due to wiping out the SMART data, that is not necessarily the case! Read the webpage--they may be true zero hour/usage drives!
My conclusion was based on more than just that page. It was just the simplest somewhat authoritative thing to point to. You're right that that page does say white label drives have gone through the same test process as recertified ones, however it does not say the results were the same.

Quote :
A factory white label is a drive could be a drive that has for example been de-stroked (platter disabled) to a lower capacity or needed another mechanical repair.
Both this, as well as other sources I've seen indicate that these drives are often ones that did have something wrong with them. In order to make them work acceptably, they are flashed with special Out Of Spec firmware (a supposedly irreversible process). There are sometimes clear hints of this by the presence of "OOS" in either the firmware version or model number. Someone in another recent deal thread reported receiving a drive with a model number beginning with "OOS."

There's another line in that link I find noteworthy:

Quote :
In terms of RMA rates, the same % applies to both. However, that is if the drive is used as intended. I would not recommend using a WL drive in a high compute virtualized environment.
This seems a bit like they're talking out both sides of their mouth. While claiming the RMA rates are the same, they also recommend not stressing the white label drives too much. Keep in mind, this is all coming from a company that sells them.

While I've never personally used one of these debranded white labels, I've been paying attention to them and the anecdotal reports from others for a very long time. I get the strong impression that they are substantially less reliable that most drives bearing the manufacturer's name. That's not to say there aren't people who will have good experiences with them.
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Mar 20, 2025
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cargo555
Mar 20, 2025
794 Posts
Can this drive be stuck in one of those USB enclosures and just be used as a external USB storage drive, without any outside active cooling/fans?
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