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This is a sort of followup to a message[^] from Paul (@OriginalGriff) about 7 months ago. He'd posted that he'd bought some 4Tb drives from Amazon at a cheap price, supposedly refurbished, but they arrived 'as new' with warranty cards.
I'm wondering what his experience has been with them so far and how it matches with mine. I'd also be interested if anyone else bought some and what they've found.
In my case, I've previously been using Seagate IronWolf 4Tb drives (model ST4000VN008) in a 6 disk ZFS array (Raidz2, i.e. 2 out of the 6 are effectively parity). The disks were all around 33000 power on hours and one had "failed" according to the SMART data. So I initially bought 2 of these drives, which turn out to be HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 drives. I replaced 2 of the Seagates, bought 2 more HGST drives, replaced 2 more Seagates, bought a final 2 and complete the rebuild of the array.
Then 1 of the HGST drives reported failure. So I sent it back to Amazon for a refund and bought 2 more, intending to keep 1 as a spare. Shortly after that, another failed, so I sent that back for a refund and used up my spare.
Just recently, another drive has reported failure. I enquired via email about the warranty and was told that the company whose name is on the warranty card only sell to the US, so my drive isn't covered as it's a resale. So sent it back to Amazon for a refund and ordered an identical replacement, only now it's double the price.
This one had a manufacturing date on it of October 2016! So I've done a bit of searching and, as far as I can work out, these drives must have been manufactured between 2012 and 2019, but I can't find a way to work out exactly when. HGST was acquired by Western Digital in 2012, but they continued to make HGST drives for a few years.
So these are actually New Old Disks (Old New Disks?) and have presumably been sitting around unused for years - hopefully in reasonable conditions for storage!
I'm beginning to think this may have been false economy and I'd have done better sticking with newer Seagate drives despite the price!
modified yesterday.
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HGSTs will run forever. Unless physically abused are the Toyota of spinner drives.
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Wow! You don't mention purchase dates or failure dates but that seems like A LOT of failures over a short-ish duration!
I have a small 2 disk Synology NAS (running with Synology Hybrid RAID - essentially mirroring) with (2) Seagate ST4000VN000 (4TB) drives. They've been running without so much as a hiccup for a decade now. 
I guess I should consider myself lucky! 
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The HGST drives were bought late October 2023 and early to mid November. The first failure was the first week of December, the second in January and the third about 2 weeks ago.
The Seagate drives were bought in March 2018 and the first failure was October 2023.
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StarNamer@work wrote: Seagate
I'm trying hard - really hard - not to be a cynic and automatically conclude that this is your problem right there.
But, of the 50+ drives I've personally owned over the last few decades, all Seagates are currently dead. Zero exception. All others (WD, HGST, some Toshiba and other brands that are lesser-known as drive makers) have been retired - as in, still work, but now so small in terms of capacity they're not worth using anymore. And I have disproportionally fewer Seagate drives than other brands (based on my experience I'd be insane to keep giving them my money).
Backblaze has been compiling drive failure reports for years now. Their reports never do anything to convince me I'm wrong.
Also - I'd never buy a refurbished drive. Ask yourself: What are the reasons anyone would ever send a hard drive back?
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I was about to say the same thing. I will never buy Seagate again. I had two 1TB drives from them whose drive controllers would just randomly stop working. For months at a time the drives would be invisible to my systems. Then sometimes, they'd decide to work. It wasn't a mechanical problem.
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dandy72 wrote: I'm trying hard - really hard - not to be a cynic and automatically conclude that this is your problem right there.
Re-read his post. If I'm not mistaken he had a failure of 1 Seagate drive, then retired the remaining 5 in favor of HGST which in turn have failed spectacularly.
I had the same opinion towards Seagate as you for the 90s and 00s. I was a huge proponent of all things WD. Then experienced a string of failures on WD drives similar to our OP. I took a big chance trying Seagate in 2014 but they've worked perfectly for 10 years. A small sample I know but...
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Yeah, that's why I said I'm trying real hard not to get my prejudice to get into the way. But like I said, I cannot ignore the yearly Backblaze reports - where they put thousands of drives of all brands to real-world use.
If you've had nothing but good luck with Seagate - obviously I can't dismiss that and I can't tell you you're wrong. 
From my position, I've had good luck with all the WDs I've been purchasing, so I'd have to have some really bad luck to get incentivized again to try another brand...
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FYI:
The HGST drives were bought late October 2023 and early to mid November. The first failure was the first week of December, the second in January and the third about 2 weeks ago.
The Seagate drives were bought in March 2018 and the first failure was October 2023.
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StarNamer@work wrote: The HGST drives were bought late October 2023 and early to mid November. The first failure was the first week of December, the second in January and the third about 2 weeks ago.
That's seriously bad. Do other systems also report them as dead? Have you tried other SATA ports?
Quite a few years ago I got a Sandybridge motherboard replaced (under warranty) because after a few months, SATA ports started disappearing. I believe there was an actual recall. I'm not suggesting the same thing might apply here, but it might be worth simply trying different ports. Who knows.
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dandy72 wrote: Do other systems also report them as dead?
None of the drives were actually completely dead. In fact, in each case, the parameter which caused them to be reported as "FAILED!" was the Spin_Retry_Count, with one of the drives having a raw value of 1441811 when I replaced it.
I suspect that, once spinning, the drives would probably continue to work fine for months (years?) but since they were being reported as having the potential to fail within 24 hours and were all within their return window, I felt it was better to replace them rather than risk a more serious failure.
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StarNamer@work wrote: since they were being reported as having the potential to fail within 24 hours and were all within their return window, I felt it was better to replace them rather than risk a more serious failure.
For sure. I would've done the same.
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The listing didn't actually say they were refurbished drives. That was just assumed from the price. Since they came with a card which indicated 5 year warranty (which turned out not to be valid outside the US) I concluded the were actually new and just old stock.
I think I've only ever bought something like 20+ drives over the years, but the only 2 I'd had trouble with before the HGSTs was one Seagate (out of about a dozen over the years) and one unbranded drive which came preinstalled in a microserver I bought. It was only 250Gb so I moved it out and put it in an external enclosure which probably shortened its life!
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There is at least one site that uses massive numbers of hard drives (thousands at least) and have been doing so for years.
They collect failures stats for all of those at an individual basis and make the results public. They have been doing that for quite some time.
Lots of detail.
Fun random read. And probably more relevant it you really need to get some real world stats on failure rates.
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It's BackBlaze (2023 stats)[^]
I have looked at it in the past, but as they've moved to larger enterprise drives it seems less relevant - I don't need 12Tb or larger drives for home use! And, if I look at the stats by manufacturer, it's difficult to determine if there's any consistency or if it's down to specific models.
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I believe Wayback Machine publishes (possibly 'published') similar data. Several years ago, I saw their figures; I believe it was on a web page. I worked on a collaborative project with them, so it could be that the data was not openly available to everyone. (But then: Why should it not be?)
I wouldn't draw too fast conclusions from one such log, though. Lots of factors may affect perceived 'disk quality'. Did you monitor the voltage stability of the power delivered to all of the disks, at the disk power contact, or could it possibly vary from one disk to another? What about that thunderstorm causing a lot of strong electrical fields - was the failure rate identical for the disks installed a week before the thunderstorm and a those installed a week after it? Do all disks have the same protection against environmental hazards such as temperature and vibrations? Are you sure that the truck delivering one batch of disks did not hit a bump in the road, giving that batch a mechanical shock even before they were installed?
Some disks have consistently high failure rates across a lot of installations. (I will not mention any specific manufacturer - It's Better Muting that ...). It would be a good thing if some web site would collect such statistics from a number of different huge installations, to show which manufacturers / models are consistently good or bad.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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I read an article posted somewhere by google. Most of their data centers use SSDs but before that spinners.
That said, from a single developer to small develop shop, after 5+ years, new SSDs are ordered. Existing SSDs are cloned and tossed. Screwing around with old tech is interesting but not profitable. True story - had a customer 3 degrees away from me. They had spinners in backup storage - sealed in the event of active hardware failure. Some of these would not spin up, so they hit them with a hair dryer... here's your sign...
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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dandy72 wrote: Also - I'd never buy a refurbished drive. Ask yourself: What are the reasons anyone would ever send a hard drive back?
I would never buy even a new a drive from Amazon. I thought to save some money and bought 2 8TB drives from them (in 2022, IIRC). Both were dead on arrival. Buying the drives locally in Israel is a bit more expensive, but none of them have ever arrived dead.
(Sample of >30 drives over the last 20 years)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I've only been buying drives from Amazon for...a decade, maybe? At least 20 drives. None of them have had a hiccup so far (and FWIW, all WD Elements or WD My Book).
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StarNamer@work wrote: I'm wondering what his experience has been with them so far and how it matches with mine
So, I guess not knowing is driving you crazy. Yeah I know, I'll get my coat. 
StarNamer@work wrote: I'm beginning to think this may have been false economy and I'd have done better sticking with newer Seagate drives despite the price!
Keep in mind, I haven't built a RAID in years. So, my experience is old and crusty, but back in the day Seagates were always known to fail before drives like from WD. I'm sure someone online will get upset and emotional about that, but whatever. Anyway, what time span are you talking here? Assume the warranty was still valid then did all these drive failures happen within a year? If so, that's crazy.
Also assuming prior to this HGST fiasco you didn't have drives failing like popcorn popping in the microwave, which would indicate a problem with your housing... maybe it overheats (which is a big problem), or you're setting your enclosure on top of a large speaker magnet for funzies, etc... Then you might be onto something.
If HGST was acquired by WD in 2012 then it's safe to assume they it was acquired with inventory. Given the fact that we had serious economic trouble in 2007-2008 and inventory can be manufactured a few years before it's actually sold to the customer (depends on the size of the company), or even if manufactured in 2012 maybe they started in 2008 being cheap and continued with it. So, in theory it's possible there was some cheap batches made you were unlucky to get. It's just conjecture though. Either way, might be time to try a different brand.
Side note, Google used to keep a list of which drive brands suck. They go through millions of them and they know. They refused to release that list though as it would effectively put that company out of business... even though in a real free market that can and should happen. Which is to say, the consumer is the last person companies care about these days.
Jeremy Falcon
modified yesterday.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: Side note, Google used to keep a list of which drive brands suck.
Backblaze isn't shying away from that, and my conclusions seem to match their yearly reports.
RE: HGST...weren't they the ones that had a major flood at their manufacturing plant a decade+ ago, and subsequently had a huge batch of unreliable drives?
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dandy72 wrote: Backblaze isn't shying away from that, and my conclusions seem to match their yearly reports.
Respect.
dandy72 wrote: RE: HGST...weren't they the ones that had a major flood at their manufacturing plant a decade+ ago, and subsequently had a huge batch of unreliable drives?
Dunno. I've been doing cloud everything lately, so me old and crusty with that. Never even heard of HGST until this post. It would explain a lot though.
Jeremy Falcon
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I think HGST used to be a Hitachi brand, and I've purchased external drives from WD, and the drives inside had an HGST label. Even recent ones, so even though they might no longer promote the HGST brand (at least on the box), WD is clearly still using the name internally...
And I don't think I've had any sort of bad failure rate with the drives I have that I know are HGST.
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They were and Hitachi bought that division from IBM earlier. The flooding happened in Thailand if I recall correctly.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Weren't the IBM drives originally branded as "deskstar" which, of course, became corrupted to death star?
I've had reasonable experiences with Hitachi and Western Digital drives - no unexpected failures before they were replaced because they were either getting old anyway, or were just replaced for more capacity.
I did have to laugh when many years ago, having just bought and installed a Fujitsu Robin drive a "very knowledgeable" friend (a technical writer journo) posted a list of drives not to be touched with a dirty stick online, and the Fujitsu was top of the stack. That drive eventually got retired some 6 years later without a hiccup when the machine it was in was upgraded.
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