Question "Hardware reset" ?

[USAFRet]

I focused on Toshiba because nearly all the others had frequent drive failure complaints even though, judging by the specs they shouldn't be failing, especially not when you are using an enterprise drive as a consumer drive.

My most recent HDD failure was a 16TB Toshiba Enterprise...😉
Went from 0 to 14k+ bad sectors in under a week.

 

[Eliticus]

Nearly 24 hours later, I confirmed what I had already strongly suspected. The "new" drive had a large number of files already present. Normal scan found nothing, but deep scan exposed them.
So the consensus is buy a WD drive from one of the big sellers directly, correct? It does cost a bit more but the hard drives alone are a thousand, so what is another 50-100?

 

[evermorex76]

So the consensus is buy a WD drive from one of the big sellers directly, correct? It does cost a bit more but the hard drives alone are a thousand, so what is another 50-100?

A thousand what? A 16TB WD Gold is only 350 on Amazon. I'd be happy to pay that much compared to saving a hundred bucks buying from a questionable source.

 

[Eliticus]

A thousand what? A 16TB WD Gold is only 350 on Amazon. I'd be happy to pay that much compared to saving a hundred bucks buying from a questionable source.

As I mentioned, I am going for a tri hard drive configuration. The other 2 were 740, so...

 

[evermorex76]

As I mentioned, I am going for a tri hard drive configuration. The other 2 were 740, so...

You said you were getting two SSDs and one big hard drive. You didn't say anything about the cost of the SSDs. But now I know, and yeah, an extra 100 to know you actually have something reliable and presumably with a valid warranty from a legitimate seller or the manufacturer seems worthwhile to me. If it was double or three times as much, I might take the risk with someone like Platinum Micro, but I would rather just go with a drive that is specified as refurbished from a better known seller. At least then you aren't risking being cheated with no recourse (or at least not an easy one) and you know it's someone that does legitimate refurbishing.

serversupply.com is one that we used at my job a lot for getting older drives needed to replace failed drives in client machines (like Dell drives to avoid warnings about uncertified drives). $275 for the same Toshiba drive you got, 90 day returns, 1 year extended warranty available (although by the time you add that you're only 50 away from a new WD Gold). Or less for a WD model which has half the failures of the Toshiba according to BackBlaze (WUH721816ALE6L4 or 0F38462 which are apparently the same physically).

serverpartdeals.com is also one I've seen mentioned as reliable, and they have both of those drives even cheaper (but only the 90 day warranty). They have manufacturer recertified drives as well, although mostly Seagate.

 

[Eliticus]

You said you were getting two SSDs and one big hard drive. You didn't say anything about the cost of the SSDs. But now I know, and yeah, an extra 100 to know you actually have something reliable and presumably with a valid warranty from a legitimate seller or the manufacturer seems worthwhile to me. If it was double or three times as much, I might take the risk with someone like Platinum Micro, but I would rather just go with a drive that is specified as refurbished from a better known seller. At least then you aren't risking being cheated with no recourse (or at least not an easy one) and you know it's someone that does legitimate refurbishing.

serversupply.com is one that we used at my job a lot for getting older drives needed to replace failed drives in client machines (like Dell drives to avoid warnings about uncertified drives). $275 for the same Toshiba drive you got, 90 day returns, 1 year extended warranty available (although by the time you add that you're only 50 away from a new WD Gold). Or less for a WD model which has half the failures of the Toshiba according to BackBlaze (WUH721816ALE6L4 or 0F38462 which are apparently the same physically).

serverpartdeals.com is also one I've seen mentioned as reliable, and they have both of those drives even cheaper (but only the 90 day warranty). They have manufacturer recertified drives as well, although mostly Seagate.

Yeah, you're right, I never said the price of the others directly, only that they were M2s and about a thousand dollars total. And I already have those, they've worked without any difficulties and did have the correct stats for new drives.
There's a WD Gold that is larger, directly from a big seller, and only 100 dollars more proportionately.
If I had intentionally chosen a refurbished then I could live with this, especially since they are offering a 50% refund if I keep it. But it's the principal of the thing - I don't know where this drive has been, and given the files I found on it I don't trust the previous owner. So I'd rather send it bag and not reward a lying seller, then buy the new one directly.

 

[evermorex76]

If I had intentionally chosen a refurbished then I could live with this, especially since they are offering a 50% refund if I keep it. But it's the principal of the thing - I don't know where this drive has been, and given the files I found on it I don't trust the previous owner. So I'd rather send it bag and not reward a lying seller, then buy the new one directly.

That would be a good offer if it was sold as just "used" and they hadn't reset the stats to make it look new, and if it was actually blank so you know they at least tested it (though at that point you wouldn't be returning it), but yeah, even though it's nothing to them, don't reward them. I can't believe they shipped a drive that still had a previous user's data on it. (You should leave reviews with that info on the Newegg page, report them to Newegg both for selling it as new and leaving user data on it, leave reviews anywhere else you can find that you could for their company.) It's funny that the data was also clear enough to tell you that the drive was probably trashed by the previous owner, too.

 

[Eliticus]

Yeah, while this seller doesn't sell that drive as used or refurbished, others do and it is 60-70% price, not 50%.
I'd have still been suspicious if it showed one previous power on, but sometimes they do check drives for QA so that alone wouldn't have been a dealbreaker.
Recovering the data required a deep scan but it was all perfectly intact. All statuses said excellent, no missing/damaged sectors. So I assume they just deleted the entire volume then did a SMART reset somehow so the odometer would show fake stats.
Then I created new volume and it suddenly showed a bunch of data read/written, which made me check deeper.
In any case, a 24 TB version of the same drive price scaled would have been 347, and a WD Gold was 450, so eh.
The other two drives I ordered directly from Newegg didn't have any problems and showed the correct stats.