There’s a great deal on a drive from Amazon Warehouse, but I’m a bit concerned about the quality of the drive and the fact I can’t return it.
Anybody have any experience buying something like this?
First thing to do is check SMART data to see if there are any fails. Then looking at usage hours, spin ups, pre-fails / old-age to get a general idea how worn the drive is and for how long you could make use of it depending on risk acceptance.
If there are already several clusters relocated and multiple spin up fails, I’d probably return the drive.
Apart from all the reliability stuff: I’d check the content of the drive (with a safe machine) - if it wasn’t wiped you might want to notify the previous owner, so she can change her passwords or notify customers about the leak (in compliance to local regulations) etc. - even if you don’t exploit that data, the merchants/dealers in the chain might already have.
I will just paste my standard procedure when I onboard any new (or used) drive: Everybody has their own
skin careHDD check routine. This is mine:I first check the SMART status with CrystalDisk, after this a short smart test, full surface check with Macrorit, full h2testw run, CrystalDiskMark, and then I check with CrystalDisk once again if anything besides power on hours did change.
Will take some days for a large drive but in terms of work hours we talk about less than 5 minutes and it covers pretty much anything without being too excessive.
Thank you, this is great advice
How easy is it to wipe or fake SMART data?
wipe or fake SMART data
My guess would be that it’s stored in some kind of non-volatile memory, i.e. EEPROM. Not sure if anyone ever tried that, but with the dedication of some hardware hackers that seems at least feasible. Reverse engineering / overriding the HDD’s firmware would be another approach to return fake or manipulated values.
I haven’t seen something like that in the wild so far. What I have seen are manipulated USB sticks though: advertising the wrong size (could be tested with h2testw) or worse.
I’ve bought used / refurbished (not sure which) with erased smart data. It being all zeros was a clear sign of erased / tampered info. After running badblocks some relocated sectors showed up.
personally, i would never buy a used drive
Depends. Are we taking refurbished, or returned sales?
Refurbished is going to have to be hella cheap to consider it for a highly redundant storage of unimportant things maybe raid 10 backup storage it something.
Returned sales are mostly still as good a new and returned for various unrelated reasons. As long as I get full warranty and right to return as if it was brand new, i don’t mind.
I run used disks with tens of thousands of power on hours. Yes the risk of each disk dying is higher but only marginally and the cost is dramatically lower. To avoid data loss when they die, I have functioning backups. This system is working really well for me.
oh, yeah, returned drives are a maybe. still gotta check it out to make sure it wasn’t returned after being dropped or worse, but it could be fine.
Yeah if I had full warranty I would be happy taking a punt but not sure I should take the risk… probably better to wait for a sale
Having worked at Amazon processing customer returns, you do not want to buy drives that have been processed through Amazon customer returns. We took them in whatever package the customer sent them in (I’ve seen gallon size ziploc freezer bags), which are just tossed into a big UPS box with who knows what else, then jittered around on conveyor bars, and then it goes into a thin plastic bag (not anti-static), thrown into (this is not an exaggeration, a lot of employees toss the items in like Kobe, it gets boring after your 900th item this week) big plastic staticky tote bins clunking around underneath who knows what else, jittered and clunked on the conveyors again, and then eventually sent to the warehouse deals desk. All protected by nothing more than a thin plastic bag.
I’d actually trust the refurb more than returned customer purchases.
Never ever buy amazon refurbished/warehouse deals on hard drives. There are absolutely zero standards for processing the return. They get thrown into standard polybags and dropped into plastic totes that ride around on conveyor bars on the way to the guy whose job it is to put it in the standard hard disk “safety” packaging for WHD. Absolutely no anti static insulation, no impact protection whatsoever unless the customer returning the thing decided to pack it nicely (they never do).
Source: used to work in amazon’s returns department
I would be more concerned about shipping from Amazon vs the quality. I stopped ordering drives from them after the last 2 I got from them were shipped in a bag with no padding.
Honestly it is up to the cost and benefit. If the discount is steep (say 25%+ off the normal price) and the warranty is intact, it is worth a try. Ultimately you have to do your backup regardless of the origin of your drives.
I’ve bought several used/refurbished drives from Amazon. Always HGST. I have not had any issue with them yet and some have been going for 4-5 years.
There are caveats though. The ones I bought have had the smart data wiped… So there is no way to know exactly how many hours they really have on them. Also the label is replaced so there no way to see manufactured year. I have no idea how old or beat up these things really are.
I don’t put anything important on them. Just backups.
I’ve recently bought a drive from Amazon warehouse. I haven’t used much other than for the initialization. Overall all of the used hard drives I’ve bought from Amazon continue to work to this day. Some hard drives I’ve bought from Ebay have had issues. I was able to fix one by shucking, but sadly the data was lost from the previous methods I tried. I have another drive that was dead on arrival. One of my most recent drives died alongside with my laptop. I was able to get my laptop fixed via warranty. I sent my hard drive in to Salvage Data for an evaluation, but the lowest estimated quote was around $2500, I only paid for it to be sent back, I may reopen the case to have it fixed in the future.
