jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Buying a used hard drive might seem like buying a used fire extinguisher, but I've been buying HGST "Renewed" drives since 2016, and I've never had a failure. I use them as D drives in desktops and as external backups. I've seen some videos on YouTube done by people who bought used drives from eBay, just out of curiosity. These are drives that have been used in server facilities for years. I recall at least one drive having over 68,000 hours of run time.

The buyers of these well-used drives tested them and used them, and they work fine. In my case, I buy what they call "Renewed" drives from Amazon for well under $100, and they come with a 5-year warranty. I have 3TB, 4TB, and 8TB, and several of them are helium drives. When I start them, they show 0 hours. I have no idea what "renewed" actually means, aside from the standard, "We check them..."

HGST is now owned by WD, and production of HGST drives has ended. WD makes a large range of HDDs, but they got some bad publicity a few years ago for hiding the fact that they use SMR technology in many of their drives. Looking at the BackBlaze failure data, HGST is always a top performer. It seems that the only way to buy an HGST now is to buy an old one.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I much prefer CMR over SMR!!!

BebuLamar

I don't know about them but just Google it and I think I like CMR better.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Thanks for that, Longshadow and BebuLamar. That was a typo. I was able to correct it and make it SMR.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

MUCH better.
Before I buy a HDD, I try to find what recording method is used.
If I can't find out, I won't buy it.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Other than wiped and ciphered, how do they "renew" drives?
I wipe and cipher HDs that I pulled out of old computers.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Below is a link to the specs, show if the drive is SMR or CMR. HGST and WD drives made before 2018 use CMR. What used to be called HGST Ultrastar are now WD Ultrastar, and they are all CMR.

https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/50697/~/steps-to-determine-if-an-internal-drive-uses-cmr-or-smr-technology

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

That's the unanswered question, but Amazon does say this, "NOTE: These HDD is used by Datacenter Servers for about 5 Years period. HDD was refurbished and data wiped with DoD standard. It's fully tested & passed factory diagnose software test. Since this is heavy duty enterprise HDD with a 2.5M-hour MTBF rating. We are confidence that to honor another 5 Years Warranty for these hard drives. Buy with confidence & worry free!

As I said above, I've been buying these since 2016 without a single failure in desktops and for backup.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

So the drives I pull out of old PCs are "refurbished" by me.....

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

And you can wipe them and list them on eBay. Don't throw them away before removing the magnets.

odujim Loc: New Jersey

Thanks for that info, because I use a pair of HGST HDDs to store all my digital RAW photos and noticed that Amazon mostly has renewed ones for sale when I was looking to acquire another pair. I'll give them a shot, since I can actually see and feel the higher quality of these HDDs. I use a dual bay drive dock by OWC to read and write to the HDDs on my MacMini M2 Pro.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Did you change the "CMR" reference in your earlier post?

https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/tpr?p=14495428&t=801469

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

"...they use SMR technology..." Yes.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Whew!
(I thought I read C when I first read it.)