Cheap 2TB HDs

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RandyC

Member
Mar 1, 2014
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15
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Portland, OR

Mark

Member
Nov 6, 2014
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Order placed on July 16th, received on July 18th. (San Jose, CA to Portland, OR.)

I ordered 3 from seller convertechs-mike .

I haven't had a chance to test these yet, but if they have ~1500 hours run time, I will be ordering a few more. I have quite a few drives <1TB that need replacing.

Western Digital WD2003FYYS 2TB 7200 WD RE4 SATA 3 5" Hard Drive HDD 2000GB 718037734989 | eBay

Edit: I don't know why it is making a link at the top.
Edit2: fixed .
Any chance to check the run time yet? I'm interested in buying a bunch from the same seller.
 

cthulolz

Member
Mar 17, 2015
58
19
8
My shipment of four arrived today. Packaging was just OK - drives were in anti static bags, wrapped in bubble wrap, inside individual bags, inside of a box with little wiggle room. The box was a little beat up, but held up OK. The individual drives could have used another layer of bubble wrap.

I've only fired one up so far. I'm running it through tests now. The WD warranty status shows as good through 9/3/2016 and a status of "Out of Region". The other links in the Warranty checker suggests that WD will honor the warranty for out of region end users.
As an update, each of my units made it through 5 hours of stress testing. Picking through the SMART info, they all have about 600 days of power on time.
 

RandyC

Member
Mar 1, 2014
70
15
8
Portland, OR
Here is the "sudo systemctl -a /dev/sd[b..d]" I did for the 3 drives I got. Each has about ~6800 power on hours. And one is failed. 2 out of 3 isn't bad. I am going to buy more on the assumption that I have a smaller sample size, and a 33% failure rate is not likely. Even at that rate, at $45 per drive, I am effectively paying $67.50 per usable drive. Still a decent deal for used RE4s.

I don't know enough about reading SMART data to really dig into the one filed drive, anyone have any suggestions?
 

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rubylaser

Active Member
Jan 4, 2013
846
236
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Michigan, USA
Here is the "sudo systemctl -a /dev/sd[b..d]" I did for the 3 drives I got. Each has about ~6800 power on hours. And one is failed. 2 out of 3 isn't bad. I am going to buy more on the assumption that I have a smaller sample size, and a 33% failure rate is not likely. Even at that rate, at $45 per drive, I am effectively paying $67.50 per usable drive. Still a decent deal for used RE4s.

I don't know enough about reading SMART data to really dig into the one filed drive, anyone have any suggestions?
I would stress test all of those drives based on the lack of historical SMART self tests in the log and based on the disks' age. At a minimum, I would fire up three instances of badblocks in a screen or tmux session (these will take many hours to complete). When this is done, check the smart values again and compare them to your current values.

If any of the disks get worse, I would discuss with the seller to get replacements.

Code:
badblocks -wsv /dev/sdb
badblocks -wsv /dev/sdc
badblocks -wsv /dev/sdd
 
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rubylaser

Active Member
Jan 4, 2013
846
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Michigan, USA
my suggestion:
badblocks -wsv -t random /dev/sdX

and run minimally 2-3 times.
Why with random over the standard destructive 4 pattern read/write of the -wsv option? Also, 2-3 times seems like overkilling something that's already being overkilled by a 4 pass read/write operation for the entire disk. If these disks can make it through one -wsv pass without increasing SMART data, that should be more than enough to stress test a disk.
 

canta

Well-Known Member
Nov 26, 2014
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Why with random over the standard destructive 4 pattern read/write of the -wsv option? Also, 2-3 times seems like overkilling something that's already being overkilled by a 4 pass read/write operation for the entire disk. If these disks can make it through one -wsv pass without increasing SMART data, that should be more than enough to stress test a disk.
my philosophy:
better safe than sorry :D

Random would pick 4 patterns differently ( not real random technically, but would pick pattern randomly on each execution).

one pass is nothing, I had some drive that show "failing" after running 2x times.

stress the disk as possible since "refurbished" has many meanings
 

rubylaser

Active Member
Jan 4, 2013
846
236
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Michigan, USA
Yeah, but randomness in this case doesn't add any value. It just uses a different sequence. This doesn't make it more or less accurate at completely reading and writing four different patterns. If you like to use the random option, that's fine, I can't find anything anywhere that suggests that using the random option makes it more effectively test the disk than just -wsv.

All that being said. I appreciate the discussion, and would completely agree with you that refurbished drives need thorough testing before ever being trusted with important data.
 

Dajinn

Active Member
Jun 2, 2015
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Aaaand they're gone. Damn, I should've picked some up. Cause now I know what I'm gonna do is see new 2 TB overpriced, overmarketed "NAS" drives for more and just say ugh...could've had RE4 drives for 50 bucks..
 

Madhelp

Member
Feb 7, 2013
39
25
18
I ordered two drives and they have 15k and 14k POH, almsot two years!!! Not really feeling that great about the purchase now. I guess on the upside they are still under warranty.
 
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neo

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2015
672
363
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I stopped buying WD rectified drives. Recently purchased 3.

1 was DOA
1 died within 3 days (unrecoverable sectors).

Now I don't trust the remaining drive. I rather buy used drives in working condition.
 

Dajinn

Active Member
Jun 2, 2015
512
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There's 2 other sellers that have cropped up on ebay that are selling these again at a similar price, around 54 bucks, with the same out of region 1 year warranty. I was considering them but now I probably won't. I agree I would rather just buy used but newer drives.
 

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
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I ordered 4 of them and so far so good. I've always been a sucker for cheap storage. I've been burned before but all in all I've been pretty lucky. I have several Seagate 1TB refurbs that I've had for several years and never had a problem with them. In fact, I've had more new drives fail than refurbs.