New to me drives bought second hand - opinions good/bad?

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Dibrom

Dibrom

Member
Oct 17, 2024
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Just bought these drives out of redundant/decommissioned NAS. Unknown to me, no history, no records, no testing data prior to sold. If anyone has any personal experience with these models, I would love to hear what you have to say be it good, bad or indifferent. I know nothing so starting here from absolute zero.

WD Re 4TB
HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 4TB
Seagate Exos 7E8 4TB

Here's what they look like. This is literally the sum total of what I know apart from serial numbers until I pick them up. They are all SATA interface.
photo.jpg
 
Dibrom said:
I would love to hear what you have to say be it good, bad or indifferent.
Click to expand...
No personal experience here . . .

But, a bit of research turns up the following: All of these drives are CMR drives (good!). And all are Enterprise grade drives - that means high quality drives (Good!).

The big unknowns however are: How many hours are on them? Do any of them have problems? If they were simply decommissioned as redundant / no longer needed then they could be good drives with life left.

The only way to know a drive's condition is by using a tool such as SpinRite (there are others). And be able to install them one at a time in a system with a SATA controller. (could do two or more if the SATA controller has ports available).

If you own SpinRite I would suggest running Level 3 on each drive for a quick check. SR will also show you how many hours are on each drive. If all looks OK, then run a level 5 on each drive to shake out any potentially problematic drives.
 
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Thanks for reply but moot now. Seller agrees to sell to me, arranges time to meet etc. then goes ahead and sells to someone else. Just the world we live in these days.
 
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Dibrom said:
goes ahead and sells to someone else
Click to expand...
Well that sucks, sorry that happened to you. It's getting so hard to get a good deal on HDDs now too, with all the AI fuelled nonsense. Last time I was talking with a buddy about HDD replacements, he mentioned this place, which sells used HDDs. serverpartdeals.com
 
Thanks for that. Good to use for a reference, but not really practical for me as not in USA and postage cost kills it. Not a big deal really, I didn't have my heart set or anything, just would've been a nice to have. Unfortunately it's the world we now live in. Honour and ethics not to mention etiquette in person to person dealings are now just quaint concepts from a long gone time in the past. Now it's all just kill or be killed.
 
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