How to verify if a HDD is new?

[paqman]

I ordered this Seagate Exos 14TB enterprise dirve from NewEgg yesterday to use as the parity drive in my new unRaid server.  The seller was listed as DealsADay, and was definitely listed as new, but I paid only $175 for it, which was more common with the price of the refurbs they sell.  Shortly after I bought it the price went up to $209 (more normal for that drive).  I suspect maybe I got lucky on a price mistake or something, and maybe my purchase clued them in on it?  I even contacted NewEgg support and they verified the one I ordered was listed as New, not used or refurbished.  

 

I guess I just want to verify that the drive is new, just to make sure the seller didn't slip me a refurb when I clearly purchased new, in spite of the price.  Knowing that most refurbs have the SMART data wiped, is there any real way to tell if the drive is new or refurbished when I get it?  Should get delivered tomorrow.

[whipdancer]

Can't help with determining if it is new, outside of doing a S/N look up on Seagate's website.

FYI, I no longer shop with Newegg unless I'm willing to lose the amount of money involved. I'd rather buy a refurb drive from a reputable seller (and know what I'm getting) than deal with Newegg's whim on whether they are going to believe me when I say the item I received is not the item I ordered.

[paqman]

13 minutes ago, whipdancer said:

Can't help with determining if it is new, outside of doing a S/N look up on Seagate's website.

FYI, I no longer shop with Newegg unless I'm willing to lose the amount of money involved. I'd rather buy a refurb drive from a reputable seller (and know what I'm getting) than deal with Newegg's whim on whether they are going to believe me when I say the item I received is not the item I ordered.

Ha yeah, I hear that.  They definitely were better in years past than recently I think.  However I haven't had any bad experiences.  That being said, I'm not a high volume buyer.  Probably once every 3-4 years do I ever buy stuff from them.  But thanks for the S/N lookup idea, I'll look into that.

[mathomas3]

that or looking up the smart history on the drive...I have only been buying used HDDs of recent... havent had issues yet 14 HDDs into it... if your happy with the price and the drive doesnt give you many red flags... roll with it... 

 

I recently spent 45$ for each of my 8tb drives... and I bought 10 of them... yea... I should have only bought 5 of them given my current restrictions on adding addl HDDs... but meh... it was a good price

[paqman]

1 minute ago, mathomas3 said:

that or looking up the smart history on the drive...I have only been buying used HDDs of recent... havent had issues yet 14 HDDs into it... if your happy with the price and the drive doesnt give you many red flags... roll with it... 

 

I recently spent 45$ for each of my 8tb drives... and I bought 10 of them... yea... I should have only bought 5 of them given my current restrictions on adding addl HDDs... but meh... it was a good price

Yeah I just think smart data is usually wiped on refurbs. And I'm not opposed to refurb, but feel like I could get a better price. Although not much better. And I would prefer new, but whatever. It comes tomorrow, I'll see what I get. 

[mathomas3]

I have never received a used hdd with wiped smart history before... is that a thing?!?

 

my two golden rules for used hdds are... that they have to be SAS disks and also enterprise disks...

 

I have a good stack of 3,5,6tb reds and greens that all died a young death... 8tb sas drives have done me well... that's why I have 26 of them... 8 currently waiting to be added to the array

[paqman]

Ha wow. Well I don't know that's just what I've read on refurbs. I shucked an old WD 3tb drive I've had forever, and put it in today. It's a green. Not sure I want to keep using it. The spin up time on it says 9 years lol. Then I looked at my order history. I bought it in 2011. It has no errors and says it's healthy. Like, I don't want to throw it away, but I will say that pre-clearing it took forever. Pretty slow speeds. So I wonder if that alone is a sign it's time to let it go. 

[mathomas3]

I wouldn't say it's time to pass on it... Just from my experience these drive have failed regularly... Of the 20 drives in my array I only have two 5tb drive remaining... I will be replacing them soon

[mathomas3]

Also something to consider... unRAID is hard on hdds... Imo fill it up and leave it like that... The excess read/writes ever time kill a hdd... Write to the drive and be done with it...

[paqman]

Yeah I could fill it up with some archive photos and videos we rarely access. (That are also backed up to AWS storage.)

[Lolight]

8 hours ago, paqman said:

Ha yeah, I hear that.  They definitely were better in years past than recently I think.  However I haven't had any bad experiences, I'll look into that.

Current Newegg are no comparison to what they used to be in the past.

 

[whipdancer]

I frequently buy refurb enterprise drives as well. My server is a mix of shucks, new internals, used enterprise drives. The shucked WD's have had the most failures. The refurbs are all still going (but none more than 3 years old for me, yet). I've had enough issues with shucked drives, that unless the price difference is enough to purchase another drive, I won't bother with them anymore.

Edited February 15, 2023 by whipdancer

[paqman]

Hard drive came and was factory sealed, and everything looks to be brand new to me.  SMART data shows no run hours.  I looked up the warranty information on Seagate's site, and it does have the original warranty good through Aug. 2026.  Pretty sure it is a new drive.  I'm cool with it, especially at that price lol.  Running it through the binhex-preclear ringer right now.  Which means I'll be able to use it next month lol.

[Lolight]

On 2/15/2023 at 5:45 AM, whipdancer said:

The shucked WD's have had the most failures.

Can you elaborate more on problems with shucked WDs?

I've never shucked those drives before.

All of my shucked ones are Seagates - of the NAS and Enterprise variety which are Ironwolf Pro and Exos.

As far as I know, all external Seagates come in those flavors, as long as you get in them in high enough capacities starting with 12TB.

[whipdancer]

18 minutes ago, Lolight said:

Can you elaborate more on problems with shucked WDs?

I've never shucked those drives before.

They are all white label WD Red equivalents with 3 being helium filled versions.  3x 8TB drives, at different dates and power on hour intervals, would just show as unavailable or errored and would cause the array to report the drive as unusable. I would run various checks and nothing would show up as wrong. I'd put it back in and it would rebuild the emulated (missing contents) data on the drive (since I would usually wipe it in the process of testing). But 2 months or 6 months later, it would happen again. I gave up and eventually replaced each of them.

[ChatNoir]

I would not consider your issues as a general issue. I use them with 0 problems like many users here.

[Decto]

7 hours ago, whipdancer said:

They are all white label WD Red equivalents with 3 being helium filled versions.  3x 8TB drives, at different dates and power on hour intervals, would just show as unavailable or errored and would cause the array to report the drive as unusable. I would run various checks and nothing would show up as wrong. I'd put it back in and it would rebuild the emulated (missing contents) data on the drive (since I would usually wipe it in the process of testing). But 2 months or 6 months later, it would happen again. I gave up and eventually replaced each of them.

 

The majority of drives I have are schucked as it's usually signifiicantly less expensive here in the UK to the point I can throw away 2 in 5 drives and still be in profit.

 

I had 1 x 500GB Seagate fail around 18 years ago when it was around 18 months old. Well it still works and I got the data off but vibrates something horrible every now and then.

I had 1 external 8TB WD drive show errors during preclear, I preclear before schucking. That one went back, probably would have been ok once it reallocated a couple of sectors but not worth the hassle when I can exchange.

I had one 3TB Seagate booted from an array after 70k hours, smart data looks good, extended smart self test good, passed another pre-clear marathon so not sure why it was booted. Not in array now but is cold store for some media I can download, but would be easier to just copy.

 

Overal my experience with shucked drives has been good.

 

The only 'issue' with the some of the Helium / shucked drives is the 3.3V standby voltage which can prevent spin. There are options to work around this (tape etc.) but better to use molex power or snip the 3.3V cable for reliability. 

 

[whipdancer]

On 2/18/2023 at 2:25 AM, ChatNoir said:

I would not consider your issues as a general issue. I use them with 0 problems like many users here.

I don't consider mine a general issue either. It is my anecdotal experience. I have had far more issues with shucked drives than internals and now externals no longer hold a distinct price advantage. I have neither the hours nor the $$ to tie up dealing with them.

Since the price of externals has risen quite a bit relative to the price of internals in the last 2 years, it no longer makes $$ sense for me to shuck externals. When I could buy 3 externals for the price of 2 internals - I was willing to take that exchange. For the sizes I'm after, it's now closer to a 5 to 4 ratio if I'm buying new drives (I haven't ever bought 4 drives at 1 time). It goes to about 2 (externals) to 3 (internals) when I consider used enterprise drives. I may only get a 1 year warranty but I get almost no questions asked during that year (and the 2 year warranty of externals only holds if I keep each shell for each drive because both sets of S/N's have to match up).

Luckily, the only used drive I had to return failed during the preclear test.

Also, the warranty experience with WD for internal drive vs. external drive has been night and day. A 14TB Red Pro showed a smart error for reallocated sector count. I emailed WD, and they issued an RMA, and gave me the option of handling shipping on my own or I could pay for and print a label through them - 3-day UPS was $5.43 - far cheaper than had I gone to my local UPSStore.

Edited February 19, 2023 by whipdancer