Hard Drive selection - renewed vs new

jdthome

Cadet
Joined
Aug 1, 2022
Messages
3
I'm in the rebuilding stage of my TrueNas server. A flooding bathroom delivered water down 3 stories of our house into the nice new office I build 6 weeks earlier in our basement. This also was 2 weeks after placing every piece of computer equipment I own into a nice neat rack. I had 2 machines. One with 8 6Tb and one with 8 8tb drives. Total actual content stored was about 23Tb. During the rebuild I hope to hit about 100Tb of available space. I'm looking at buying drives now and have been contemplating buying these renewed drives. In the past, I shucked the 6tb and 8tb drives from portables. I also had time to research and plan better. Unfortunately I feel rushed in this situation to recover data from those 2 machines. Thought about using 10 14tb drives. Here are the 2 I'm thinking about.

This HGST drive renewed


Or this unknown Drive. I've seen people say WD but others Seagate. I hope not Seagate. I have actually already ordered 6 of these but thinking about returning them for the HGST.


They were both the same price at $169 but today I see the Arsenal is now $209
 

nabsltd

Contributor
Joined
Jul 1, 2022
Messages
114
The Arsenal drive is not new. It is a Western Digital, Seagate, or HGST drive that has had its SMART data wiped and a different label applied. You are literally buying a random used drive that may or may not function correctly, as nobody knows what Water Panther does to "refurbish" the drives apart from the label and wiping the SMART data.

At least the HGST listing is honest about being used, but even that is just "Amazon Renewed", which can also mean literally anything. It could be a drive that they sold that was returned (for whatever reason) and given a basic test and put back on the shelf. It could have actual stress testing done, or not. It could just have SMART data wiped. It could be an actual manufacturer refurbished drive. There is no way to tell.

If you want a true manufacturer refurbished drive with a warranty you can trust, try something like this.
 

jdthome

Cadet
Joined
Aug 1, 2022
Messages
3
The Arsenal drive is not new. It is a Western Digital, Seagate, or HGST drive that has had its SMART data wiped and a different label applied. You are literally buying a random used drive that may or may not function correctly, as nobody knows what Water Panther does to "refurbish" the drives apart from the label and wiping the SMART data.

At least the HGST listing is honest about being used, but even that is just "Amazon Renewed", which can also mean literally anything. It could be a drive that they sold that was returned (for whatever reason) and given a basic test and put back on the shelf. It could have actual stress testing done, or not. It could just have SMART data wiped. It could be an actual manufacturer refurbished drive. There is no way to tell.

If you want a true manufacturer refurbished drive with a warranty you can trust, try something like this.
Thank you for the link. I will return the drives I ordered and buy those listed. The price is so comparable that your link definately makes a better choice.
 
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