Mini XL+ only sees 2 of 8 drives. What to check?

[Adrian]

My advice for future disk purchases is to ask around and find a good shop or online store and stick with them as far as is possible.
I am in the UK and have been buying components and computers from CCL Online for 20 years. Usually cheaper than Amazon when I have bothered to check.
My previous preferred store was taken over by a much larger organisation and went downhill very rapidly. I had a DOA USB external drive. The store point blank refused to replace it as I had opened the box and they could not resell it as new. I think waving our Sale Of Goods Act at them got me a refund.

 

[dev_willis]

The eight drives are in three shipments and the first shipment of two arrived last night packaged as you see here. I installed them this morning and one fails with the same issues as the ones I'm sending back. I guess I've learned my lesson about buying drives on Amazon.

The other drive seems to work. No clicking or scratching and not excessively loud. I found a guide for burn-in testing elsewhere on this site and have been following it. I ran the smartctrl short test and it looks okay as far as I can tell. The conveyance test failed to run with an "Input/output error" and a message about "Conveyance Self-test funcions not supported." I'm running the long test now, which it tells me will take 840 minutes.

 

[HoneyBadger]

The eight drives are in three shipments and the first shipment of two arrived last night packaged as you see here. I installed them this morning and one fails with the same issues as the ones I'm sending back. I guess I've learned my lesson about buying drives on Amazon.

View attachment 46024

I wouldn't even open the other two packages. I'm guessing the replacement drives were fulfilled from the same seller.

No foam, no plastic bracing, not even cardboard "scaffolding." Shameful.

 

[Redcoat]

No foam, no plastic bracing, not even cardboard "scaffolding." Shameful.

AGREED!
This is what I am used to getting (from Amazon, actually...)

Just pulled this already-burned-in-and-tested spare drive from my closet for its photo-op.

Good luck with this messy situation - there's an element of disrespect that I find particularly distasteful.

 

[HoneyBadger]

This is more what I would expect for a quantity-purchase.

 

[Redcoat]

This is more what I would expect for a quantity-purchase.

Yes, I bought a 10 or a dozen order that shipped like that. I realize that I misspoke above - the pic of the single drive package was that of a warranty replacement (fresh new-drive!) from WD - thanks for the prompt to correct!

When I bought my Mini from iXsystems the 4 drives were in a large 4-slot block of foam packed alongside the case itself (so the foam block was at least the same size as the side elevation of the case) and I had zero concerns.

 

[dev_willis]

The rest of the drives showed up lol

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

A couple of years ago when I upgraded my old FreeNAS which is now my backup system to 4 x 4TB for some reason drives on Amazon were way cheaper than our trusted suppliers @work could offer. Of course there is always some fluctuation in the component market and I seemingly just picked a bad moment to order.

So, what's it gonna be, boy? WD RE, Seagate Barracuda, HGST ...? Reading the customer reviews the most frequent complaint was inadequate packaging and DOA drives. Regardless of brand and model. I finally ordered 5 Toshiba N300 for the sole reason that these were retail products. So each drive was in an individual retail box and of course sufficient protection inside of that.

For building my new system luckily I could order from a trusted B2B source again without paying a premium. It's a weird business sometimes.

 

[joeschmuck]

That is pathetic how Amazon shipped those. I'd have them all returned and provide photos to them about the packaging. They have got to be loosing money in the long run.

 

[ChrisRJ]

It is exactly how all my non-retail disks from Amazon had arrived. Over the years I have retried buying there a couple of times and in total must have returned at least 8 drives. I fail to comprehend how they can so blatantly screw this up.

 

[Hellione]

A.. is selling everything, eyes only at quantity and money. There is no love or respect for tech. Support your local small dealers. They might sometimes be a little more expensive, but love their work, and handle things with care, they know what they are selling, A... workers mostly don´t.

 

[joeschmuck]

The problem with Brick and Mortar stores is it being very difficult to compete against the mail order companies. I always prefer to go put my hands on what I'm going to buy when I can. There was a day not too long ago (okay it was a very long time ago) where you had to go into a store to buy parts or you would have to buy a minimum quantity order that was too much for a single person. Then the first real signs of mail order parts, how many people remember the Computer Shopper Magazine (about 1.5" to 2" thick and about 16"x12" form factor) with 90% ads for sales and then the 10% tech talk (there was some good tech talk articles.) But sometimes the brick and mortar stores prices can get a bit too high but I understand why, they have to pay for the store, light, and the employees. It's a difficult situation.

I just hope @dev_willis gets some reliable hard drives in the end.

 

[Hellione]

Yeah. Or, if someone has to buy online for whatever reason, choose a, for whatever products you need, specialized company.
save the whales.... and hard drives

 

[das1996]

Amazon can't package hd's worth a sh!t. I'll buy various electronics from them, but absolutely no drives.

I've purchased bulk drives from newegg before. They'll usually come bubble wrapped (2-3" on each side) in packing peanuts. The amazon droids need to package as much product per minute as possible. Returns are a different dept's problem.

Speaking of packaging, I generally refuse to buy motor oil from amz as well, usually arrives leaking because they don't tape the caps and seal the quart containers in a plastic bag. Recently ordered some because it wasn't available locally. We'll see how much of a mess arrives.

 

[dev_willis]

I've initiated returns for all this junk. Hopefully getting a refund won't be too painful. It does seem like they must be losing money on this. All the drives I tested were brand new, unless the SMART data was tampered with (is that possible?), and now they're scrap metal.

So, where is a good place to buy drives? There doesn't appear to be any relevant local businesses near me that I can patronize. Should I go with Newegg?

Thanks for all the advice!

 

[HoneyBadger]

All the drives I tested were brand new, unless the SMART data was tampered with (is that possible?)

I've read reports on the ServeTheHome forums of this exact thing happening - ironically enough from an Amazon seller - the power-on-hours of a drive showed very low, but there were evidence of previous SMART tests being run at thousands of hours.

NewEgg has improved their packaging over the years, but it seems like the new fad is to buy external USB drives and shuck them like oysters.

 

[joeschmuck]

NewEgg has improved their packaging over the years, but it seems like the new fad is to buy external USB drives and shuck them like oysters.

It's unfortunate but that is driven by marketing as the cost of a bare drive is so high compared to a shucked drive with the same hard drive model number. Crazy marketing.

 

[dev_willis]

The problem with Brick and Mortar stores is it being very difficult to compete against the mail order companies. I always prefer to go put my hands on what I'm going to buy when I can. There was a day not too long ago (okay it was a very long time ago) where you had to go into a store to buy parts or you would have to buy a minimum quantity order that was too much for a single person. Then the first real signs of mail order parts, how many people remember the Computer Shopper Magazine (about 1.5" to 2" thick and about 16"x12" form factor) with 90% ads for sales and then the 10% tech talk (there was some good tech talk articles.) But sometimes the brick and mortar stores prices can get a bit too high but I understand why, they have to pay for the store, light, and the employees. It's a difficult situation.

I just hope @dev_willis gets some reliable hard drives in the end.

I got started tinkering with computers in the 90s and Computer Shopper Magazine was my go-to source for stuff back then. That was back when Maxtor had good drives and better warranties. They would RMA a drive on the spot and cross-ship the closest larger size they had, which was usually quite a bit larger, for free. I got a number of free hard drive upgrades by pulling drives that were still under warranty out of old computers. Then they went under and Seagate, I think, bought them.

It's unfortunate but that is driven by marketing as the cost of a bare drive is so high compared to a shucked drive with the same hard drive model number. Crazy marketing.

NewEgg has improved their packaging over the years, but it seems like the new fad is to buy external USB drives and shuck them like oysters.

Really? Do they put Red Plus or Ironwolf models in external drives? They don't seem that much cheaper to me; especially if they're not NAS drives.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Really? Do they put Red Plus or Ironwolf models in external drives?

The popular WD EasyStore USB drives have drives equivalent to a WD Red - at the 8TB+ sizes they are still CMR. There were mixed reports about some drives being 128MB cache vs. 256MB, but for bulk storage purposes that will make little difference. The drives all seem to have the newer 3.3V PWDIS "power disable" feature though, which may be problematic for older power supplies or backplanes that aren't expecting it. This causes the drives to not spin up, and requires you to take measures to physically block off the pin connection using non-conductive tape or use an adapter.

The biggest issue is that "shucking" the drive puts your warranty into question. If WD identifies that the drive was "shucked" they're certainly within their rights to deny an RMA. With that said, if you can get the drives for 60% of the cost, you can offset that by buying a few additional spares.

Disclaimer/disclosure - I haven't used this method to get drives myself, it's all second-hand information.

 

[dev_willis]

The popular WD EasyStore USB drives have drives equivalent to a WD Red - at the 8TB+ sizes they are still CMR. There were mixed reports about some drives being 128MB cache vs. 256MB, but for bulk storage purposes that will make little difference. The drives all seem to have the newer 3.3V PWDIS "power disable" feature though, which may be problematic for older power supplies or backplanes that aren't expecting it. This causes the drives to not spin up, and requires you to take measures to physically block off the pin connection using non-conductive tape or use an adapter.

The biggest issue is that "shucking" the drive puts your warranty into question. If WD identifies that the drive was "shucked" they're certainly within their rights to deny an RMA. With that said, if you can get the drives for 60% of the cost, you can offset that by buying a few additional spares.

Disclaimer/disclosure - I haven't used this method to get drives myself, it's all second-hand information.

Hmm, sounds like cutting corners to me which I prefer not to do. Plus, I'm building this as a media server to house raw video files and serve them to two DaVinci Resolve workstations and my understanding is that larger caches and higher spin rates will make a difference to us.