Drives on Ebay: What do you call new?

[Markess]

I was just wondering where folks stand on this? How much prior usage are you willing to accept for a drive sold as "new" on Ebay?

A while back I received a "new" condition drive on Ebay that had over 32000 power on hours, so obviously NOT "new", and which I got a refund for. Last week I received a "new" condition drive shipped in vendor packaging, but unsealed antistatic bag. SMART reports it had 17 power on hours on 17 power cycles. So, it seems it was "used" for a time. The rest of the SMART report is clean though, and the Warranty Checker shows its an in-warranty retail item. So, I plan to keep it.

Obviously 32000 hours isn't OK for "new", but is 17 hours OK? Where does everyone like to draw the line on these things?

 

[Rand__]

Well of course thats an individual decision
I wouldnt mind the 17 PoH, depending on the size this might very well been a badblocks run.
17 power cylcles on the other hand don't sound like that, so it seems to have been used.

Me personally wouldn't call it 'brand new', and most likely I wouldn't call it 'new' either, but something slightly diminishing like 'almost/basically new'. Ebay has a category for that - 'new other' that I would expect it in.

Whether you should act on that depends on...
1. the price (would you have bought it with a more accurate description)
2. the impact (does it negatively affect the drive, warranty or anything else important to you)
3. on the type of seller (private vs commercial)

If you are happy with it but upset about it not really being new then just mark the item description poorly in the feedback system.
If you are not happy you can open a case and claim its not as described (if it was listed as 'new' and not 'new other')

 

[ari2asem]

up to 100 hours PoH is for me "new".

 

[Markess]

Whether you should act on that depends on...
1. the price (would you have bought it with a more accurate description)
2. the impact (does it negatively affect the drive, warranty or anything else important to you)
3. on the type of seller (private vs commercial)

That's really a great approach to deciding what to to. I knew it would be an individual thing, but with your comment above, I see it can be a bit of a moving target as well. Thanks for sharing it.

In this case, I never thought the drive's usage warranted an adverse review or opening a case. But, it got me thinking about what usage would be unacceptable, so thought I'd ask the community what they thought.

 

[azev]

I also consider little bit of POH as manufacture testing the drive before shipped.

 

[blunden]

Personally, I expect the seller to list at least the rough amount of usage in the description even if it's marked as new (unless described as unopened). As long as I know about it beforehand, I'm fine with a bit of usage.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

Obviously 32000 hours isn't OK for "new", but is 17 hours OK? Where does everyone like to draw the line on these things?

A few years ago I got some of those 32000+ POH drives that were sold as New. But the seller (who I trust) got them from Dell as surplus New as well, and they were in sealed Dell boxes with the drives sealed in bags as well. The seller was very dismayed at this and offered to either refund me or drop the price to 1/3 of what I had paid (refunding the other 2/3). I chose the second option and those drives ran fine for years and years until they were replaced with SSDs.

BTW, the seller sent me a USB stick (with their logo, probably cost them next to nothing) and $50 worth of Starbucks gift cards for the inconvenience. Yes, the cards worked, for the cynics out there.

As far as SSDs go, up to 72 POH as long as remaining life is still 100%. Note that there are some sellers who can successfully reset most SMART data on hard drives, and I don't know if they have figured out how to do that on SSDs, particularly M.2 ones. But I avoid buying from the sellers known to do that, and if the M.2 stick has a manufacture date of October 2019 on the sticker, I'm pretty sure New is New.