GoHardDrive retailer (amazon / ebay) possibly forging SMART data, selling used HDDs as New ?

[ServerSemi]

Sorry to bump this old thread but I'm in the same situation I purchased 4 "new" devices from an ebay seller "apethouse" and inside I saw a receipt from goharddrive.com meaning they are the ones fulfilling the order and these are clearly used but resealed as to appear as new. Smart data show everything 0 but I have a feeling these are refurbs with SMART data cleared. How can I see the previous SMART data on these drives? I don't want to risk copying my files to them and then die shorty after.

They have a bunch of good feedback but I think most people just don't care because of the cheap cost. I care mostly in principle like why would you sell them as new if they are refurbs?

Here is the ebay listing: HGST Ultrastar 3TB 7200RPM 64MB SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - HUS724030ALE641

 

[Fritz]

Apehouse and Goharddrives are one and the same. If I bought them advertised as new and the obviously were not new, I'd return them. Having said this, I have had good luck with Goharddrives in the past. Haven't bought from them recently because they jacked up there prices and refurbs can be bought for less elsewhere. also, there warranty service is second to none.

 

[smithse79]

The way we all knew was because there were logged SMART errors that had not been cleared. AFAIK, that is the only way to know for sure that these are not truly new. I will agree with sentiments from above in that GoHardDrive was willing to work with me. they gave me a 50% refund to keep the drives and replaced one later when it did start failing. Also, These are high-end enterprise class drives built to last. I've had 6 of these running 24x7 for nearly 2 years with only one failure and they replaced it immediately. In the long run, I've been happy.

 

[Fritz]

I'll also add that they replaced a failing drive that was 4 months past the 1 year warranty plus paid for return shipping. YMMV

 

[dwasdfdafadfwfafd]

These assholes are still selling used as new on newegg

 

[james23]

These assholes are still selling used as new on newegg

hey, as ironic as this may be- i was the OP on this thread, but over the past 2 or so years of dealing with GoHardDrive, ive been super happy with them (& have bought about 30-50 Hitachi drives from them by now)- BUT FOR my first experience with them, (the 1st post in this thread, however, they did take care of the situation, such that i was happy) - i actually now specifically look to buy from them on amazon or ebay when i need Hitachi drives (which is the *only* brand i use for HDDs).

of all the drives ive ordered from them since that OP , i dont think one has failed nor given me any issues (and i run about 80% of my drives though a exhaustive, custom, stress/verification test that runs for about 3 weeks, before i consider a drive "ready/good" for use). + all of my drives run 24/7 (although, only a few are under true 24/7 heavy load)

so like i said, its a bit ironic, but im quite the fan of GoHardDrives now (again i have only ever bought "new" used hitachi enterprise drives from them)

did you have a bad experience?

EDIT- btw, its worth noting: GoHDD have "got their act together" on their SMART data wipe process. Such that, now, they really do wipe ALL of the SMART data, including the SMART LOG HISTORY and SMART ERROR LOG that they used to forget to wipe (or didnt know how to wipe, previously). That said, i do always buy "new" (used) Hitachi drives from them, knowing FULL WELL they wont be "NEW" ... but i just love the reliability of Hitachi Enterprise HDDs *SO much* that i would take a used Hitachi Ent. HDD over *ANY* other mfgs NEW, FRESH out of the box HDD.

 

[dwasdfdafadfwfafd]

hey, as ironic as this may be- i was the OP on this thread, but over the past 2 or so years of dealing with GoHardDrive, ive been super happy with them (& have bought about 30-50 Hitachi drives from them by now)- BUT FOR my first experience with them, (the 1st post in this thread, however, they did take care of the situation, such that i was happy) - i actually now specifically look to buy from them on amazon or ebay when i need Hitachi drives (which is the *only* brand i use for HDDs).

of all the drives ive ordered from them since that OP , i dont think one has failed nor given me any issues (and i run about 80% of my drives though a exhaustive, custom, stress/verification test that runs for about 3 weeks, before i consider a drive "ready/good" for use). + all of my drives run 24/7 (although, only a few are under true 24/7 heavy load)

so like i said, its a bit ironic, but im quite the fan of GoHardDrives now (again i have only ever bought "new" used hitachi enterprise drives from them)

did you have a bad experience?

EDIT- btw, its worth noting: GoHDD have "got their act together" on their SMART data wipe process. Such that, now, they really do wipe ALL of the SMART data, including the SMART LOG HISTORY and SMART ERROR LOG that they used to forget to wipe (or didnt know how to wipe, previously). That said, i do always buy "new" (used) Hitachi drives from them, knowing FULL WELL they wont be "NEW" ... but i just love the reliability of Hitachi Enterprise HDDs *SO much* that i would take a used Hitachi Ent. HDD over *ANY* other mfgs NEW, FRESH out of the box HDD.

I am not cool with some morons selling used as new, at almost the price of new drives. Wiping SMART is not freaking "getting their acts together", it is a fraud, should be illegal just like tampering with odometer.

 

[james23]

I am not cool with some morons selling used as new, at almost the price of new drives. Wiping SMART is not freaking "getting their acts together", it is a fraud, should be illegal just like tampering with odometer.

I hear ya, and do agree with you.. but in all fairness i do want to UPDATE / say that to this day, i still look for and buy ( ONLY Hitachi HUA drives) from goHardDrive, and have YET to have a single one fail or give issues (im easily over 200+ 2tb/3tb HUA drives, from them now, all running 24/7 , w loads).

The few times ive ventured outside of gHDD , to chase a deal or other low prices (only on hitachi HUAs), i have at times encountered issues (almost always due to poor shipping, but some that seemed to be shipped fine, but did have some issues).

So as long as you are aware of what you are getting / buying (via reading this thread), i would recommend them via amazon and ~$50-60 for 3tb Hitachi HUA drives is a great value in my opinion/experience. I bought 6x 3tb's from them on amazon ~2 weeks ago and those are all still in my testing setup now ( all w 0 errors/issues so far). For as angry as i was in that OP 3 years ago, its kindof an un-expected twist/story given how shady most "used/referb/new" HDD sellers are now-a-days.

I was actually thinking about venturing into the 4tb HUA drives for the 1st time, for a specific client's needs soon , but decided to stick with 3tb for now (+ the $/gb on used 4tb HUAs isnt where id like it to be just yet)

 

[Cheddoleum]

I am not cool with some morons selling used as new, at almost the price of new drives. Wiping SMART is not freaking "getting their acts together", it is a fraud, should be illegal just like tampering with odometer.

What he said. I have several goharddrive/apehouse Ultrastars, a couple of which have the mysterious errors which somehow were present from "new"; long before the number of hours indicated had supposedly even been reached -- gosh, such a mystery!

The fact that these drives have a good performance record is entirely due to the excellence of Hitachi; it doesn't excuse goharddrive or whatever name they use fraudulently selling them as new. Despite the fact that they have not failed I will never recommend them or use them again. Lying is lying, and Hitachi's innate quality doesn't excuse it.

 

[james23]

I agree , it is lying - (also almost all sellers on amazon of these HUA drives sell them as NEW, still no excuse).

I should also re-iterate from one of my replies, every one of these NEW/REFERB/whatever Hitachi HUA drives (from ALL sellers), have had their HGST's label printed MFG date "erased" (quite litterly, via a pencil's eraser). just wanted to point this out, also.
(see image, the drives come with a MFG date like "JUL-2011" printed in that top right corner, they use a pencil's eraser, or similar, to white the date out)


So yea, all credit to Hitachi, for making the best drives ever... these shady sellers are LEANING on that fact, to MODIFY referb drives, and sell/con them as NEW (bc seller knows: 1- they most likely wont fail anytime soon bc they are hitachi HUA, 2- most ppl wont dig into SMART data, if they even look at SMART, at all)

 

[doctor]

GoHarddrive also sells curious 'white label' enterprise disks (or did) on eBay that were Western Digital SATA RE4 disks.

A few years ago I was working on a project where we shipped out Dell workstations as IoT devices, and were having high failure rates in the field using the desktop-quality drives Dell shipped (4-6% per year). We purchased 200 RE4 "whitelabel" disks from GoHarddrive (though the firmware was a little wonkey, and they had almost paper labels). A couple were DOA during testing (and immediately replaced no questions asked), however the rest that were installed and ran for the two years I was working on the project had an extremely low failure rate, and those that did fail appeared to be from external sources (lightning, etc).

Now this may speak to the RE4 being a reasonable quality drive, or buying disks that are beyond the initial bathtub failure curve, however for my use case (hundreds of desktops with high repair costs) we were able to purchase RE4's that were substantially cheaper than new disks (Dell wouldn't sell us enterprise disks in optiplex desktops), and had a near-zero failure rate over 200 units for two years.

Goharddrive has been whitelabeling and selling these disks for years. I have no idea how they do it, where they source so many disks, but as a data point -- they worked really well for me.

Caveat emptor.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

Now this may speak to the RE4 being a reasonable quality drive, or buying disks that are beyond the initial bathtub failure curve, however for my use case (hundreds of desktops with high repair costs) we were able to purchase RE4's that were substantially cheaper than new disks (Dell wouldn't sell us enterprise disks in optiplex desktops), and had a near-zero failure rate over 200 units for two years.

For 200 units, you should have been able to get a quote-to-order for any changes you wanted to the stock Optiplex. You'd probably be told that Dell hadn't certified the enterprise drives in the Optiplex and that they would only have a component warranty (for the same duration as the system warranty). If you want them to add a different card (perhaps a video capture card as an example), you'd be told that you had to either order the systems without an operating system pre-installed, or provide your own image to Dell.

Goharddrive has been whitelabeling and selling these disks for years. I have no idea how they do it, where they source so many disks, but as a data point -- they worked really well for me.

Most likely large amounts of lease returns. Even Dell sells off-lease components in bulk (1000's of identical drives) to places like IT Creations. Note that I've been very satisfied with IT Creations and have never received a drive with "fake" SMART data from them. Just using them as an example of where drives end up.

 

[dwright1542]

I've also had stellar results with all the velociraptor 10k SATA drives I've bought from them. 80-100 drives, 1 failure.

 

[scurrier]

I took a chance on them today for two 6TB HGST drives that they say are "recertified." I doubt that, but I bet I will still get drives that are fine. I will qualify them for a week or two to make sure they're not garbage. If anyone has a good, simple qualification routine that exercises random IO please let me know.

 

[DoctorQuality]

GoHardDrive are counterfeiters, pure and simple. Same as a used car dealer zeroing out odometers and selling the cars as "new" but with the condition that they service the "warranty". Ofcourse there are laws against doing that to car odometers, but since we're talking harddisks here its legal grey area.

They take used drives and refurbs decommissioned from datacenters and from liquidations, wipe SMART (takes a fraction of a second), and masquerade them as "new" to the unsuspecting, then play dumb on the rare occasion a technically savvy customer smells something fishy. These operations are springing up like roaches and the manufacturers are aware. The SMART stats in the OP tell me they aren't that sophisticated - there are subtle differences between a hamfisted regen of the SMART data via the serial interface and a drive that's just come from the factory.

As far as their "warranty", its only as good as their likelihood to be around for any length of time to service it. And if at some point they end up incurring too much overhead in servicing those pseudo-warranties, expect them to disappear in the middle of the night and re-emerge under a different name.

Its fine that some people here have had okay experiences with their drives, but its greymarket, you're taking your chances. And just because a drive from them shows up without any visible physical wear & tear has no relevance on their high mileage internally. . Drives installed in datacenter scenarios are typically handled more carefully than Joe Sixpack installing a drive in his PC case.

Spot on. I bought a "new" drive from "dbskyusa88" on eBay. Also DBA "dbsky" on Amazon. The seller's address is a rent-a-box storefront in Vegas, per Google street-view. The drive was drop-shipped from a warehouse less than 3 miles from GoHardDrive's main address in Cali. GoHardDrive lists the exact same drive, at the exact same price, also as "new." The build date was scrubbed off the label, the drive bore scratches indicating prior mounting and the SMART data was zero-ed out. Since the drive is 5.5 years old, it's surely a server pull.

When I left eBay feedback that the drive was not new, within 30 minutes I received a "full-refund-and-keep-it" offer. I guess that explains the nearly 100% positive feedback posted. I ignored the offer; I'd rather post the facts and eat the cash. However, within two days, my feedback magically disappeared, no notice, nothing … and my links for feedback & follow-up are gone. So eBay knows exactly what's up, but since it's making a boatload of cash off GoHardDrive it's down for '$crew the buyers.' There's almost no negative feedback at Amazon either.

Actually, I suspected I would end up with a server pull. I mean just how much 6-year-old NOS would still be lying around in static bags in a warehouse, on deep discount, anyway? I just wanted the extra 'like' drive in my spare parts bin, as a last-ditch temporary solution in a dire emergency. And it's a classic HGST enterprise drive out of Thailand, so there's a decent chance it will get me by if I ever have to resort to using it.

Still, listing them as new, and selling thousands upon thousands of drives every month based on the lie … and eBay & Amazon aiding & abetting them … and LE turning a blind eye … it's a real pi$$er.

Here's a creative solution. Everyone feel free to order a drive from GoHardDrive via eBay or Amazon. Post a negative review. Get their offer. Keep the hard drive. Get the full refund. (Or file a chargeback with your credit card if you don't get the offer.) Tell all your friends how to get a free hard drive. See how long GoHardDrive can stay in business under those conditions.

 

[DoctorQuality]

GoHardDrive is a scumbag company. They sent me a "new" drive that was 3 years old and had scratches all over it. obviously a refurb. I sent it back for a refund. I told them please send me a new drive. They sent me another refurb. I threw it in the garbage and didn't pay for it

Order some more hard drives from GoHardDrive. Use a different credit card for each one. Take pictures proving the drives are used, then throw the drives away and do chargebacks with the credit card companies. Help GoHardDrive lose money on your every transaction. Enough chargebacks and a credit card company will raise GoHardDrive's percentage fees on EVERY transaction. Help GoHardDrive lose even more money. Tell all your friends how to get a free hard drive. Help GoHardDrive lose a lot more money.

 

[Fritz]

Order some more hard drives from GoHardDrive. Use a different credit card for each one. Take pictures proving the drives are used, then throw the drives away and do chargebacks with the credit card companies. Help GoHardDrive lose money on your every transaction. Enough chargebacks and a credit card company will raise GoHardDrive's percentage fees on EVERY transaction. Help GoHardDrive lose even more money. Tell all your friends how to get a free hard drive. Help GoHardDrive lose a lot more money.

Lame and childish. Don't like the company? Don't do business with them.

 

[DoctorQuality]

Lame and childish. Don't like the company? Don't do business with them.

Thousands of customers will buy these drives, thinking they are new, and only finding out they were server pulls when the drives fail and they lose all their data. They will not have the choice of "not liking the company" and "not doing business with them" because they will not know they were lied to until it's too late. It's not lame and childish to try to deter a company from being this dishonest. It's good citizenship toward others.

 

[Fritz]

Thousands of customers will buy these drives, thinking they are new, and only finding out they were server pulls when the drives fail and they lose all their data. They will not have the choice of "not liking the company" and "not doing business with them" because they will not know they were lied to until it's too late. It's not lame and childish to try to deter a company from being this dishonest. It's good citizenship toward others.

Do you have any proof or are you just expressing your opinion as if it were fact?