Super cheap 18TB hard drives

[Cruzader]

"OS" means "off spec". Usually, one or more platters of a higher capacity drive didn't pass testing, so those platters are disabled in firmware and the drive is sold with lower capacity.

Personally, anything that made a platter not pass testing is not something I want spinning around in a drive with my valuable data.

Or more commonly they were simply ordered as a custom/adjusted spec.

If they are sold at a lowered spec for a technical reason that is to be marked on label or sku.

 

[nabsltd]

If they are sold at a lowered spec for a technical reason that is to be marked on label or sku.

Based on the shenanigans that SSD manufacturers pull (changing to lesser-performing parts after the SKU was reviewed), I don't believe this is true.

A "6TB SAS drive" can have pretty much anything inside of it in the form of spinning rust as long as the capacity is nominally 6TB and any other claims (connection speed, cache size, etc.) are also accurate. For example, nobody would likely ever know if a drive manufacturer reduced the speed of the cache RAM in the drive. Everything is covered by specs that use "up to", etc.

 

[Cruzader]

Based on the shenanigans that SSD manufacturers pull (changing to lesser-performing parts after the SKU was reviewed), I don't believe this is true.

Not much i can do about what you belive or not really.

But for seagate to sell unmarked b-grade drives to a appliance vendor that they know will put them in a performance storage appliance, that would be a insane legal liability/risk compared to the tiny saving it is.
They already sell those drives through other channels, so im not sure what their upside would be compared to that risk.

And just completely unrelated without pointing any fingers, i hear goharddrive has some really cheap rebranded seagate drives for sale...

 

[sl12]

I had a bad experience with these OS HDDs.
I bought it as new, 15% died within 2 weeks.