Any Experience with Refurbishe…
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Any Experience with Refurbished HDD?
mambanegra
Posts: 588
in The Commons
So, I'm moving to a new computer, one that can actually support internal hard drives! newegg has HGST 8TB drives for under 200, but they are refurbished. The page says 2 year warranty.
Is this a dumb purchase?
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That's a tough question.
One of the best sources of data on this is probably Backblaze, a backup service that releases the findings on the smorgasbord of hard drives they use. Their blog article on how long drives last has some interesting revelations, showing that a new drive is more likely to fail in any given year than a drive that's a year or two old (as a drive that's lasted that long won't have an inherent manufacturing defect), but past three years old, the drives start failing fast due to parts wearing out.
These two charts indicate this, showing both total survival rate, and per-annum failure rate:
My guess if a drive is refurbished well is that it may be actually be less likely to suffer infant mortality, but at the same time it is liable to wear out faster.
I'd guess that if you're prepared to change the drives in a couple of years, they may actually be safer up until that point, but after that, they may well fail sooner.
I understand the question given the price tag. However I would never buy a hdd refurbished let alone second hand. Same with SSD. Some parts i just buy new.
So if my budget was 200 and i had to pick between a refurbished 8TB and a new 6TB or even 4TB i would always go for the new one.
This is not nessassarily based on fancy graphs or statistics just a gut feeling.
So while i dont consider it a dumb purchase i do think its unwise.
You can't, to my knowledge. "refurbish" a drive. There are no servicable parts outside of a clean room, and it costs more to do that then to manufacture a new drive. So what "referbished" means in this case is out of original packaging, and the reason the drive was returned is what's important, you have no way of knowing that. Due to the large number of drives that get returned because of manufacturing issues and the fact that an 8 TB drive is probably in that category since it is too new to get much wear, I'd avoid those like the plague, the odds are good you are going to be sending it back.
I do buy used equipment, generally in the two year old range particularly workstations, and haven't had a problem with the drives in those which are also 2 years old.
If you are a prime member there is a new Seagate 8TB internal hard drive currently on sale at Amazon for $150
https://smile.amazon.com/Seagate-BarraCuda-Internal-Drive-3-5-Inch/dp/B07H289S7C/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3NCZ9P4Q314B7&keywords=8tb+internal+hard+drive&qid=1560782034&refinements=p_72%3A2661618011&rnid=2661617011&s=gateway&sprefix=8tb+internal+hard+drive%2Caps%2C377&sr=8-4
To make a buying decision on any storage device you need to know what will be on it, how replaceable that data is and how important it would be to you if that data was lost.
For 3d assets you can generally download any content you've bought from the original source, with the exceptions of sites that have closed, so the data is highly replaceable.
The things that would be highly important if lost would generally speaking be your scenes, renders and any irreplaceable assets. I would have no problem at all buying a larger refurbished drive for my 3d assets, and might do so in my next upgrade, I bought multiple 6Tb drives last time and that was painful. What I would do is make a backup stored elsewhere of all my downloaded asset zip files etc. in case there was an issue with not being to simply DL everything in case of failure. I do right now both backup my WIP, completed scenes and renders on a weekly basis as well as putting all WIP on DropBox.
There is nothing terribly special or rare about clean environments anymore. The data recovery company my company uses has one and they do repairs right down to pulling damaged platters to get the data off the others.
An 8Tb drive is expensive enough that manufacturers probably aren't willing to bin them when they get RMA'd for stuff like a failed motor or other mechanical part that hasn't caused damage to the platters when a tech can replace them with an hour or so of work.
I would also add to this that BackBlaze uses its drives as hard as anyone out there. When they report increasing drive failures after 3 years that is after 3 years of near constant use. Any drive that gets past 6 months to a year, depending on usage, can be expected to last quite a while under average use.
So there is this and then newegg has an ironwolf 6TB for $180.
I've been reluctant to go with Seagate due to repeated failures over the years (several at home and a couple at work) but everything seems to default to seagate. So, maybe it's just that they are so common that they appear to be horrible due to the sheer number of disks? The plan will be RAID 0 + nightly backup. So, failure isn't going to be a complete nightmare...but will be a PITA, nonetheless.
_ Also Western Digital and Seagate have Refurbs _
In my experience (50+ HDDs) bad sectors are by far the most common HDD killer, in that case they'll have to replace the platters (or maybe just the bad ones) to refurbish them. The rest of the tech is fairly solid if the drive is handled correctly (not dropped or shocked while running). I had two identical Seagate drives that survived 7+ years of daily use before bad sectors killed them both, they could probably have run for several years more if the platters had been replaced.
With older disks with motors with ball bearings the bearings might wear out after some years (I've never experienced it though), but the fluid bearings used today can last "virtually forever", according to Seagate (probably meaning something else will fail before the bearings).
Another disk killer is WDs infamous Intellipark feature. I don't know if they use it anymore, or if it's enabled by default if they do, but I'll suggest checking any WD drive you have/buy. More here:
https://www.storagereview.com/how_to_stop_excessive_load_cycles_on_the_western_digital_2tb_caviar_green_wd20ears_with_wdidle3
Seagate is actually, IME and in BackBlaze's results, better quality than WD, although both are very good.
Everyone's experiences will vary. I used to be a Western Digital FANBOY but after three HD failures I just can't accept the risk. I then went with Connor/Maxtor until they were unavailable and then went to Seagate with NO REGRETS. Western Digital support was okay in diagnosing that their drive was garbage (mechanical failure) but was of no consolation what-so-ever for my lost original art, writings etc. I know people who swear by WD and I'm okay with other people having good luck with them, but words can't describe that horrible, gut-punch feeling when you realize your stuff ain't coming back.
EDIT: And yes, I know, I know, "If it is important, back it up!". But an OS drive failing is a bad thing no matter how archived you are when you produce a lot of stuff CONSTANTLY.
Also, not everyone can afford a robust NAS or archive system, nor can everyone be the "Techspert" it takes to construct and maintain all that.
I don't mind buying refurb. I have two refurb computers (both years old), a refurb phone (also years old now), and I've had other refurb computers that I gave away to my kids (they still have them). Having got all that, I don't think I would ever touch a refurb harddrive, just due to their very nature of wear. Some parts I always want new, and harddrives are one of those parts. Besides, harddrives are relatively cheap at the moment...why even consider a refurb HD?
Laurie
Well, I'm spending a crazy amount of money on the computer...so, I was trying to be stingy and those prices seemed so good...but, probably too good to be true.
It occurred to me that I have 2 8 TB in a WD external drive that I will be able to put inside my new computer once I copy the data off of them. No idea of the condition they are in, since they've been stuck inside a plastic enclosure for a couple of years, but they'll end up where DIM and stuff like that gets stored, so not exactly vital. At least, that's the plan so far...