Is an Amazon Renewed 16TB HDD worth it?

I just picked up this new to me 16 Terabyte Hard Drive off of Amazon for less than $11 per Tb! The Catch? It's "Renewed" so, was it worth it? Considering its still faster than all of my other HDD's the only thing that I have that is faster is my my SSD. Also, for only $15 more you can get a 3yr protection & data recovery plan for it. I'd say that's 100% worth it.

#amazonrenewed #Hdd #westerndigital

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[geoffstrickler]

Interestingly, my first HDD cost me $11/MB, in the late 80’s. $1100 for a 100MB drive was a good deal then.

[orune]

1:47 The extra 2 pins on the drive is for an activity LED. Pretty common for servers so you can see if the drive is functioning while it's inside the rack

[buildfrom]

Unless mistaken S.M.A.R.T. Information is understood to be reset therefore it's very difficult to tell how much these hard disk drives have been used.

[gtaus]

Generally, a great video, but with one serious flaw IMHO. I have purchased about 20 Amazon renewed HDDs for my Home Media Server, and only a couple were defective. However, I recently received 2 HDDs that both passed the Quick Format but both failed the Extended Format - which checks the entire HDD. You just cannot assume that a successful Quick Format ensures you have a good drive. Although it takes hours and hours to run the Full Format on a HDD, it will check the entire HDD and let you know if there are problems. Better to find those defects when scanning the Full Format for hours and hours then putting the HDD in your computer after a successful Quick Format and only have it err out in a few weeks, months, etc... when the Amazon return period is over. BTW, the seller of the Amazon renewed HDDs I ordered never responded to my emails about their defective HDDs. Good luck on any seller warranty from them beyond the Amazon return period. These Amazon renewed HDDs can be a great value, BUT you have to really run them through the long, extended testing and Full Format option before putting them in use.

[HTXJoseRosae]

I bought a HGST 10TB, but it was labeled as used in data center, the seller said most drives had around 5yrs of POT, mine only had 3yrs and a total of 27 power on cycles. Drive has been working great and at half the price I’d say it’s a bargain.

[BenReese]

From what I've heard, Purple drives are designed more for continuous use, but focus less on data consistency. You shouldn't get any bad reads, but with video surveillance it's not really a big deal if a frame or two is distorted or lost. I probably wouldn't rely on a Purple drive by itself for normal data, but in a RAID array where you already have parity, it should be just fine.

[markwith]

I have read somewhere that part of the renew process is the resetting of the stats. So it is unlikely that the drive has not hours on it. The likelihood is that it has many hours on it. The thing is you will never be able to tell, you can just see how long it lasts. I think it's ok as long as you have your data somewhere else, but i would not rely on it as the only place you have your data, you need multiple copies just in case it fails.

[ACuteAura]

pre-WD HGST drives are practically indestructible after not dying for a year or so. i remember data center techs just throwing them across the room into a bin next to the tape backup machine and they didn't care.

[OuRuKai]

I recently purchased two 12TB MDD NAS drives listed as Amazon renewed. Both drives are actually unsold Seagate EXOS x14 12TB drives that were then offloaded to MDD which did the rebrand on them. The Model and Serial #'s identified by UnRaid were checked against the Seagate serial number checker and both were found in the Seagate database. $250 drives for $95 each. Also, both were displaying 0 power on hours when I checked the status of both disks.

[bufordmaddogtannen]

That drive says "RECERTIFIED" on the label. Which means at a certain point it failed, was sent back to WD and fixed. SMART data was deleted in the process.

Renewed/refurbished drives are drives that have been decommissioned, wiped and resold. SMART data may or may not be there.
Certain companies (e.g. MDD) use their own labels so that the manufacturing date can be omitted.

[TheGhungFu]

Thanks! Surveillance hard drives are designed, mainly in firmware, to be written to constantly and read from infrequently, since most files are never accessed after being created.
I'll add that many 're-certified' hard drives have never been used at all. Sellers have to agree to a price floor for new drives so they relabel them as 're-certified' when they have a big stockpile of these drives. I recently bought two Seagate 12TB EXOS enterprise drives for $85 each and am convinced these drives have never been used. Should last for years in my RAID1 NAS.

[jdsim]

Surveillance is meant to be written 24/7 non stop, red is 24/7 powered on. BTW the warranty doesn't cover enterprise drives.

[giga-chicken]

Power on hours is not a good metric all by itself, you also really want to pay attention to power on count, the number of times the disc has started and stopped. These data center drives are perfectly happy to be turned on and left on all the time, if it's not doing anything the heads will park, and the motor just spins it's fine. They don't really like being started and stopped, it's like thermal cycling: hot is fine, cold fine, going from hot to cold and back is not.
For an ssd power on count is useless, and power on hours is also a lot less helpful, what you really want is the total data that's ever been written to the drive over its life.
The fact that the disc info said 0 hours doesn't mean it's "really refurbished" it could mean the entire "refurbishing" process is wiping the drive's smart data, it's actually a bad sign not a good sign, because you're never going to actually know the drive's true metrics.

[MrCbrehaut]

Last night I received a brand new Seagate Ironwolf 20tb from Amazon. When I tired it on for the first time it made a squeezing noise like a squeaking wheel on a car for two minutes. The drive would not let me initialize it on Windows and my MacBook Pro would also not even recognize it.
I sent it back.

[akthree]

Is there a possibility that during refurbishing, they reset the firmware and overwrote the usage history?

[wmgilliland]

you'll find most items marked renewed are actually new items that were returned and never used at all, but can no longer be sold as new. A surveilance drive uses "shingle" method of storage(interleaving) that is the data is overlapped with the previous track like shingles on a roof. this makes more storage in the same space as a smaller faster writing drive.

[Michael.Chapman]

1:28 "Big boring Western Digital hard drive"... you mustn't fully comprehend what you're holding--this is the first 3.5-inch drive on Earth to ever boast 9-platters (18 heads), the first drive to ever debut a triple-stage head actuator, the first drive to use EAMR (energy-assisted conventional magnetic recording) and that's barely the start of the Ultrastar HC550's sophistication.

[dreamfyrethedragon]

Pretty nice video!

I have been contemplating getting one of these hard drives from Amazon Renewed for Cold storage and I think you made that decision a little bit easier.

[tzviasegal]

I bought a couple of 'renewed' drives from Amazon a couple of years ago... just to see what the heck it was. You can't 'renew' a hard drive. Wear is wear. The SMART data was cleared by the people who 'refurbished' it- so I couldn't see how many years it was spinning away in some data center... I got one that had not been cleared.. and it shows like 5 years worth in hours. Well, they lasted a few months. Thankfully I had nothing important on it and what was on it was just test stuff... yea they blank the SMART data so it looks 'new'.

[SpoonHurler]

Surveillance drives generally have very high endurance as they need to write continuously. Mechanically, they tend to have motors tuned to be used 24/7/365, better spindles and magnets depending on the drive. The best surveillance drives also have better vibration control mechanisms but I personally haven't seen much difference in all the consumer facing hdds.
As far as renewed/ refurbished drives, they are very good options for bulk storage, especially when you can buy more than about 1.5 compared to new... Preferably 2 for 1 is my target cause there will be failures (about 10% in my experience in the first year) but if you got two that's about 1% for both to be duds. Of course avoid storing mission critical stuff on it without a backup. Other than that, they are great imho.