New (Refurb) Hard Drive Tests to Check ?

Hi

Recently bought a secondary hard drive for storing movies, tv shows from eastdigital hk and arrived it today. Packaging was good.

Model is Seagate ST12000VE0007 SkyHawk Al 12TB (Refurb). what are the tests to be performed to make sure it is okay to load data.

I have taken screenshot by running crystal disk info but could not understand from those numbers.

I copied few video files and speed transfer is 100 Mb/s.

https://ibb.co/nCbCGsp

Please suggest.

Comments

  • +1

    Hard Dusk Sentinel is another software that will show the health of your HDD.

    • Yup. Just run a full write surface test, then a long smart test and you are good to go.

      • -1

        Just run a full write surface test

        Sure, if you've got 1 to 2 weeks to spare.

    • +7

      Hard Dusk Sentinel

      Why use the NZ version ?

  • Why in the good lords name would you buy a refurb hard drive.

    • +2

      I think I’m with OP here, if the purpose is to store less important data (such as movies), it’s a cost effective way to have…

      • Still a massive pain if it fails, hardly worth the saving imho. How does one even "refurb" a hdd?

        • Been a few deals from this mob

          Not that I've bought into any

        • Refurb is perhaps the wrong term, they just secure erase. Nabbed a few HDD from work for absolute peanuts, was dubious at first since they've high working hours, alas many years on they've never failed. But yeah, the risk is obviously there.

    • Considering it's a surveillance harddrive, it's a pretty low risk. If it fails, chuck in a new one. The odds of it failing at the moment you get robbed is pretty small.

      Plus these are recertified by seagate to be "as new" with zero hours on it. Might have been returned to them (most harddrives go to data centres these days, they don't use all of them), might have had bad stickers, might have had a dodgy component that was removed and replaced. For the price saving it's worth it IMO, since spinning rust drives are always just a matter of time before they die.

      I have one of these refurb drives, it's in my backup chain.

      • Just a matter of time, sure. But I just swapped out smaller 10 year old drives that showed no errors for one 14tb.

      • might have had bad stickers

        What's that?

        • literally the sticker was torn/incorrectly placed so they relabelled it and sent it out. More a seconds than a recertified.

          • @freefall101: Oh I see, no idea that was a thing.

          • @freefall101: On a different note, do you know of any reliable sources to nab those 0hr drives? I seem them every so often from local PC stores but they're always so limited with stock.

            What's the average going discount for them anyway, are we talking about peanuty 2% or is it more significant?

            • @[Deactivated]: This mob - https://www.ozbargain.com.au/deals/eastdigitalhk.com. Their website is awful, but the drives I've been running since Feb are perfectly fine. They're not fake, that's for sure.

              It's really significant discounts, that Exos X16 16TB that's $239 from them at the moment is $700+ retail. It's why if you just need a lot of storage and don't really care about data loss it's a ridiculous bargain, it's cheaper than buying drives used. Well packed (they use big foam blocks and a anti-static bag), quick arrival.

              I've never had to do a warranty claim so maybe 6 months from now I'll be screaming they're a ripoff. But really, for the price, if it blows up I'll just buy another one.

              • @freefall101: Thanks for sharing the link! I'll keep an eye out on them from now on for sure.

                Had a quick glance at the price and they're as is better than what I was expecting.

                Can I ask what you're currently doing with your storage situation? I've just a single 12TB external drive for non-crucial stuff and a NAS has been in the back of my mind for a while. If you were ever in the similar situation, how far of a leapfrog step did you go from 1 singular drive to a NAS (assuming it's just for basic data)?

    • have you heard of the bathtub curve for failure rate on HDD?
      because refurb server grade HDDs offer awesome bang for buck

  • Use the force like and "HDD smart" in googlebox.TV show.

    Puns are intended.

  • The best thing you can do is a long format. This will force the drive's internal error correction and sector management to do it's thing and will self-correct any minor issues.

    Hard Disk Sentinel is excellent, I consider it essential now. And good old Spinright if you really want to give the drive a good thrashing to work out any serious problem areas.

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