Strange things are afoot in the EasyStore....

[Constantin]

So I just finished shucking nine 12TB drives and noted one very odd thing in the process. They were either WD120EDAZ or WD120EMFZ, and two appear to be damaged slightly. Both of them featured a bent-up section for the top metal cover. It's as if the cover had been pried a bit. This is pretty hard to photograph but I hope the enclosed will give you an idea.

Has anyone else encountered bent sections on their shucked drives? I'm pretty certain I didn't touch these drives when I shucked them (the tool doesn't reach that far) and clearly I cannot complain to WD about a bent drive shell in an enclosure that I'm not supposed to open. I'm about to start burning them in and wonder what impact that bending has on drive longevity.

 

[alfredfriedrich]

Just shucked 2 12 TB WD Elements and they were WD120EDAZ. One of them had a slight bent top cover, just as you desribed, barely noticable.

 

[Belphegor]

Interesting. Could this be a way to repurpose damaged drives that couldn't be sold otherwise?

 

[Jailer]

Interesting. Could this be a way to repurpose damaged drives that couldn't be sold otherwise?

Sounds reasonable. If I bought a new drive that looked that that when I took it out of the package I wouldn't trust it. They likely got kicked by a QC visual check and made their way to the easystore's as a result.

 

[adrianwi]

A couple of the 8TB WD Internal drives (WD Book and Elements I think) were bent like that, but I thought nothing of it. They work fine, and I never see them in my FreeNAS box either, so fine by me. They saved me almost £1000 on the cost of my build!

 

[Constantin]

FWIW, I mostly completed a burn in test (bad blocks and long SMART) before our power was summarily cut when the neighbors construction crew decided to add some spice to our life and set the ground on fire. Seems like the backhoe operator didn't look carefully enough for the overhead main power supply cables, causing a nice snap, crackle, pop lightshow for the neighborhood. I will test it again when I have the UPS upstream and so on. However, all looks good so far.

I will be paying particular attention to the helium levels in those bent drives since that's the biggest potential issue (a leak).