Best Hard drives for size, storage, and reliability?

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,278
Hi
Just had an external 2 TB Seagate die at 2.5 years, on a 3 year warranty.

I'm after internal drives, in the 2-4 TB range, that will last. 3-6 years is good.

NAS?

Newegg has the 2 TB models for around 120. They suck on service.

Costco? Just returned a 2 TB, after it died, pulled it out of the external box, tested it, dead, and they had me reassemble it to get credit. Took me about a minute to do that.

Still, it's looking like, considering the return policies from newegg and amazon, that Costco might be the best way to go?

Pull the drive out, put it in an internal, removeable bay, use it till it dies, then reinstall in external USB box?

Anyone have a SATA drive they have had good speeds with, hooked up to your motherboard, yet had reliability?

Just lost 2 TB of data I'm kind of mad I lost. I think the transfer fried the drive, in it's cheap little external USB casing, with no active cooling...
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,278
The data loss is a lot. You take each Bluray disk, at 20-30 dollars average, 40-50 gigs each, and you have 40 times 20-30 dollars lost, with this 120 dollar drive gone. Replacement?

Where are you all getting, or renting Bluray disks these days?

All those were from Blockbuster. Gone.

I guess you can buy the disks from Costco, 20-30, vs. a 1-3 dollar rental.
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Messages
13,924
Location
USA
Hi
Just had an external 2 TB Seagate die at 2.5 years, on a 3 year warranty.

I'm after internal drives, in the 2-4 TB range, that will last. 3-6 years is good.

NAS?

Newegg has the 2 TB models for around 120. They suck on service.

Costco? Just returned a 2 TB, after it died, pulled it out of the external box, tested it, dead, and they had me reassemble it to get credit. Took me about a minute to do that.

Still, it's looking like, considering the return policies from newegg and amazon, that Costco might be the best way to go?

Pull the drive out, put it in an internal, removeable bay, use it till it dies, then reinstall in external USB box?

Anyone have a SATA drive they have had good speeds with, hooked up to your motherboard, yet had reliability?

Just lost 2 TB of data I'm kind of mad I lost. I think the transfer fried the drive, in it's cheap little external USB casing, with no active cooling...

Amazon should have a good return policy. What issue do you have there?

How about the HGST Deskstar 3.5-Inch 4TB 7200 RPM SATA III 6Gbps 64MB?

Proper backups man...this is storageforum.
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
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Messages
13,924
Location
USA
The data loss is a lot. You take each Bluray disk, at 20-30 dollars average, 40-50 gigs each, and you have 40 times 20-30 dollars lost, with this 120 dollar drive gone. Replacement?

Where are you all getting, or renting Bluray disks these days?

All those were from Blockbuster. Gone.

I guess you can buy the disks from Costco, 20-30, vs. a 1-3 dollar rental.

If you bought the bluray disks, re-rip them onto your new drive. There is no money loss unless you tossed the blurays.

I buy blurays occasionally from amazon or BestBuy when on special.
 

Bozo

Storage? I am Storage!
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4,396
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Twilight Zone
I know this will make a few here cringe, but I have always bought Western Digital drives. But I always bought the RE series drives. There are no funky firmware issues to use them stand alone or in RAID arrays. They have a better warranty, although I haven't used it in years. The only WD drive I replaced in the last two years at work was an original 3.5" Raptor that had been running almost 7 years. The only other WDs that I replaced were in computers supplied by equipment venders. All of these were el-cheapo junk from various venders that didn't last a year. Eventually as soon as the equipment was ready to go into production, I would image the hard drive ( all makes) and replace it with a WD RE series drive. ( I usually tried to do this while the venders reps were still there so they could see me throw their hard drive in the trash ) I replaced a couple of Hitachi's, but these were first generation 2TB drives.
One of the things that I think contributed to their longevity is they ran 24/7.

You get what you pay for.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,278
2.0 out of 5 stars Beware of Repackaged Hard Drives, July 31, 2013
By
Josh Finkelstein "Josh"
This review is from: HGST Deskstar 3.5-Inch 4TB 7200 RPM SATA III 6Gbps 64MB Cache Internal Hard Drive (0F14681) (HDS724040ALE640) (Personal Computers)
*** Unfortunately, this review is not about the performance of the Hard Drive. I wasn't even able to install them and test them out - Keep Reading ***

I had my suspicions about the great price on this hard drive but I figured I would try it out and see if I was wrong.

When I received my hard drives I looked at the serial numbers and decided check the warranty. Even though the drives had an April 2013 manufacturing date on them they were only showing a 2 year warranty. More correctly they were showing a warranty ending in 2015. I called up HGST and asked them about it.

I was expecting them to tell me that the drives were older drives that had been sitting around and to just use my receipt if I needed warranty service. That would have been fine if that was the answer. However that's not he answer I got. I was told that these drives were taken out of an external enclosure. Evidently drives that come out of an external enclosure are cheaper so people often take them out , repackage them and sell them for a gain. The problem with this is that as soon as the drive is out, the warranty is void.

Big problem here. I tried different ways to contact the seller, Oceanside Store, but it kept leading me over and over again to Amazon Customer Service. They, of course, told me to send them back. My concern is that there will be more of these getting sent out, probably even these, and people will be none the wiser till it's too late.

Be careful when you purchase drives that seem to be a good deal. Sometimes they are but often times there is something going on.

Go here to check out your warranty on this drive : [...] .. If it doesn't come with a three year warranty or it seems suspicious then give them a call.

I honestly don't know if it's Oceanside repackaging them or whomever they get them from. Either way. Look out.
 

CougTek

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 21, 2002
Messages
8,729
Location
Québec, Québec
An HGST drive would be my top choice too.

But even with a top notch SSD from Intel, you can't rely on a single disk. Always dupplicate the data. Always.
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Messages
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USA
Looks like the price went up to $149 for the 3TB since I posted that link. I also found the 4TB NAS HGST direct from Amazon for $189. I didn't see that earlier. I'm also looking to get one or two of these drives for myself.
 

sechs

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
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Left Coast
I have a couple Seagate SV35 drives. They're meant for video surveillance, but I haven't found any meaningful performance difference from the Barracuda drive on which they are based.

All else being equal, I get drives from Amazon. Never any shipping problems, good customer service.

If warranty length is a worry, keep in mind that most AmEx, Visa Signature, and World MasterCard cards extend your warranty on purchased items for up to one year.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,278
I'm finding everytime I find a drive for a good price, on amazon, there is a catch.

For instance the product page will say a 5 year warranty on a new drive. The one with the 155.00 price tag states a 1 year warranty, and the drive is bare, or OEM. The rest are 220.00 and up, that state 5 year warranty.

Pretty much what I'm after is SCSI enterprise reliability in a SATA drive.

Looks like the HGST drives are being bought up, and the prices are going high, as sellers try and max profits.

WD RE or red drives maybe the way to go for value at this point.

What I don't like is the prices are super high, compared to pre-flood.

I may wait, and see if they drop as the supply meets demand.
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
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Messages
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USA
I'm finding everytime I find a drive for a good price, on amazon, there is a catch.

For instance the product page will say a 5 year warranty on a new drive. The one with the 155.00 price tag states a 1 year warranty, and the drive is bare, or OEM. The rest are 220.00 and up, that state 5 year warranty.

Pretty much what I'm after is SCSI enterprise reliability in a SATA drive.

Looks like the HGST drives are being bought up, and the prices are going high, as sellers try and max profits.

WD RE or red drives maybe the way to go for value at this point.

What I don't like is the prices are super high, compared to pre-flood.

I may wait, and see if they drop as the supply meets demand.

I just bought the 4TB HGST Deskstar NAS from Microcenter. I needed it now so I couldn't wait for prices to change. It has the 3-year warranty. They price-matched Amazon. You're not going to find enterprise reliability in a SATA drive. I don't even think enterprise reliability is even a thing you can quantify. Specifically speaking about my company, most of our enterprise drives are 2.5" SAS now anyway because we can fit 25 in a tray vs 15 and the tray isn't as tall.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
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I am omnipresent
The most reliable large (3TB+) drives I have are Hitachi Deskstar models. I've had "enterprise-type" Ultrastars fail but not the Deskstars.
I have a reported SMART failure on the 4TB Barracudas on a roughly quarterly basis, which doesn't make me very happy, but those drives are also in the most tortured conditions I could put them, since they're surrounded by 23 other drives with no active cooling on them. I also carefully note that all the Barracudas have had gentle failures rather than head crashes. Everything has been completely recoverable.
I only have three WD Reds in 3TB+ capacity and while those haven't failed yet, both the 3TB WD Blacks (the ones that are supposed to have 5 year warranties) I have had did and were thereafter relegated to sacrificial external enclosures.

I really couldn't afford to buy all Hitachi drives. The Seagate disks are substantially cheaper than anything else that will behave properly when attached to a RAID controller. Were I buying just one or two drives, I would absolutely out of my way to get the HGSTs at this point.

I'm not sure there's a correlation between warranty length and drive quality right now, either. I don't think Seagate started making worse drives just because they dropped their standard warranty by a year and I strongly suspect there's not a single damned difference between a WD Blue, a Red or a Black other than maybe the amount of on-board cache. If you''re worried about reliability or availability, store your data several places. Encrypt it and stick it in the cloud. Whatever. We have options we didn't have ten years ago.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,278
Thanks

Pulled the trigger on a 4 TB Deskstar for 185. free shipping, amazon.

I REALLY need to protect my data, and this will the be backup disk for a bunch of movies.

I've backed up my data on two, old, seagate drives, that aren't used much.

Funny how the low capacity drives seem to last a LONG time, plus, the actual hours of use with these is very little.

gs
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,497
Location
USA
Thanks

Pulled the trigger on a 4 TB Deskstar for 185. free shipping, amazon.

I REALLY need to protect my data, and this will the be backup disk for a bunch of movies.

I've backed up my data on two, old, seagate drives, that aren't used much.

Funny how the low capacity drives seem to last a LONG time, plus, the actual hours of use with these is very little.

gs

Run RAID6 and do backups anyway.
 

sechs

Storage? I am Storage!
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Left Coast
I'm not sure there's a correlation between warranty length and drive quality right now, either. I don't think Seagate started making worse drives just because they dropped their standard warranty by a year and I strongly suspect there's not a single damned difference between a WD Blue, a Red or a Black other than maybe the amount of on-board cache.
As far as I can tell, the only difference between the SV35s and Barracuda drives that I have is the firmware, the label, and one more year of warranty on the SV.

Basically, the additional cost of a drive with a longer warranty is you paying the manufacturer for the insurance of a replacement should it fail.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,278
Likely I'll copy most of this stuff to the drive, then remove the drive from service, waiting for the others to fail.
2 TB is about 1000 dollars in movies. So, the drive will have 2 grand in movies on it.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
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Best program to test drives to make sure they are ok from the factory?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
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I am omnipresent
Crashplan is $50/year and you can keep all your movies on that if you're worried about it.
Your best bet for basic testing is probably the manufacturer tool: WinDFT or WD DLG or Seatools.
 

snowhiker

Storage Freak Apprentice
Joined
Jul 5, 2007
Messages
1,668
Do you still get a repaired hard drive as a warranty replacement?

Do people actually trust "re-certified" hard disk drives to be as good and reliable as the original?

If a drive dies after 30 months of a 36 month warranty, the warranty on the replacement is only for the remainder of the original 36 month warranty correct?

I wonder if vendors take this into account and give you a replacement that is only expected to last x number or months.

Or is it simply the "luck of the draw" and you either get a crap replacement or a perfect one or one in between?
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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Do people actually trust "re-certified" hard disk drives to be as good and reliable as the original?

If a drive dies after 30 months of a 36 month warranty, the warranty on the replacement is only for the remainder of the original 36 month warranty correct?

I wonder if vendors take this into account and give you a replacement that is only expected to last x number or months.

Or is it simply the "luck of the draw" and you either get a crap replacement or a perfect one or one in between?

It's a crapshoot. Years ago I did receive a new drives a few times. Once I received a clearly used drive and it was no good. I don't bother with RMAs anymore; hard drives are cheap enough.
 

sechs

Storage? I am Storage!
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Left Coast
It's too much effort for manufacturers to try to shaft you so subtly.

They'll hand out refurbs before new drives, but that's about as far as it gets.
 

Santilli

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Messages
5,278
HGST 3.6 gig arrived yesterday. Spent most of the day trying to initialize the entire disk. Would only initialize 1.6 gigs, wouldn't see the rest. Tried both machines, no joy.

Finally decided to check my bios. It was F3, it's now F13, and supports 3.6 gig drives or larger. It is the latest beta bios. That scared me a bit. bios updates and I have had problems in the past.
@bios did the job smoothly.

The bios update reset all the bios settings, so I had to redo my raid 0, which worked pretty easily. Just set it in the bios, and the raid was back up and running. Problem was David had some bios trick that allowed the machine to boot with all 6 2 gig ram sticks, even though 2 were bad.

It's not pleasant trying to figure out on this machine what is going wrong, as your screen flys through the bios, goes to memory check, and then shuts down. 10 seconds later it tries again, etc.
Annoying and a bit scary.

Looked in the bios, and slot 3 was dead, no ram showing. So I pulled 3 and 4 and trashed them. Now we got by the memory check, and the machine booted.

Still, 7 doesn't see the drive.

So, gigabytes web page, download and install all the new drivers for my motherboard, and we are up and working seeing the drive.

After that I was able to initialize and format the entire drive.
That's the good news.
The bad is the drive is oem, has an invalid serial number and no warranty. Testing Amazon's return policy on this one...185 dollars for a "new" oem with no warranty?

It was listed as "new" with a three year warranty on the website. The invoice indicates otherwise.

Company is "ServerTEch Solutions, Inc" in Florida.

The memory which was never really good, and OCZ's division now only RMA's SSD's pretty much, so the ram is in the trash.

I also discovered a Seagate 1.5 gig drive has gone south, and with it my entire Sean Connery collection.

Fun computer day...
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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Messages
17,497
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USA
HGST 3.6 gig arrived yesterday. Spent most of the day trying to initialize the entire disk. Would only initialize 1.6 gigs, wouldn't see the rest. Tried both machines, no joy.

Finally decided to check my bios. It was F3, it's now F13, and supports 3.6 gig drives or larger. It is the latest beta bios. That scared me a bit. bios updates and I have had problems in the past.
@bios did the job smoothly.

The bios update reset all the bios settings, so I had to redo my raid 0, which worked pretty easily. Just set it in the bios, and the raid was back up and running. Problem was David had some bios trick that allowed the machine to boot with all 6 2 gig ram sticks, even though 2 were bad.

It's not pleasant trying to figure out on this machine what is going wrong, as your screen flys through the bios, goes to memory check, and then shuts down. 10 seconds later it tries again, etc.
Annoying and a bit scary.

Looked in the bios, and slot 3 was dead, no ram showing. So I pulled 3 and 4 and trashed them. Now we got by the memory check, and the machine booted.

Still, 7 doesn't see the drive.

So, gigabytes web page, download and install all the new drivers for my motherboard, and we are up and working seeing the drive.

After that I was able to initialize and format the entire drive.
That's the good news.
The bad is the drive is oem, has an invalid serial number and no warranty. Testing Amazon's return policy on this one...185 dollars for a "new" oem with no warranty?

It was listed as "new" with a three year warranty on the website. The invoice indicates otherwise.

Company is "ServerTEch Solutions, Inc" in Florida.

The memory which was never really good, and OCZ's division now only RMA's SSD's pretty much, so the ram is in the trash.

I also discovered a Seagate 1.5 gig drive has gone south, and with it my entire Sean Connery collection.

Fun computer day...

Only buy Amazon products direct from Amazon. There are so many shady characters out there selling used or OEM drives that have no end user warranty.
 

Chewy509

Wotty wot wot.
Joined
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Messages
3,357
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Gold Coast Hinterland, Australia
Isn't there some consumer law in the US regarding:
1. False advertising? The product is not as decribed.
2. You can't offer a "new" product without warranty?

I know in Australia, both of the above practices (whilst do occur) are illegal. You have the right to return a product (within a reasonable period of time) if it's not exactly as described or if you knew the conditions you would not have purchased it, and all "new" products have an implied warranty.
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Messages
13,924
Location
USA
HGST 3.6 gig arrived yesterday. Spent most of the day trying to initialize the entire disk. Would only initialize 1.6 gigs, wouldn't see the rest. Tried both machines, no joy.

Finally decided to check my bios. It was F3, it's now F13, and supports 3.6 gig drives or larger. It is the latest beta bios. That scared me a bit. bios updates and I have had problems in the past.
@bios did the job smoothly.

The bios update reset all the bios settings, so I had to redo my raid 0, which worked pretty easily. Just set it in the bios, and the raid was back up and running. Problem was David had some bios trick that allowed the machine to boot with all 6 2 gig ram sticks, even though 2 were bad.

It's not pleasant trying to figure out on this machine what is going wrong, as your screen flys through the bios, goes to memory check, and then shuts down. 10 seconds later it tries again, etc.
Annoying and a bit scary.

Looked in the bios, and slot 3 was dead, no ram showing. So I pulled 3 and 4 and trashed them. Now we got by the memory check, and the machine booted.

Still, 7 doesn't see the drive.

So, gigabytes web page, download and install all the new drivers for my motherboard, and we are up and working seeing the drive.

After that I was able to initialize and format the entire drive.
That's the good news.
The bad is the drive is oem, has an invalid serial number and no warranty. Testing Amazon's return policy on this one...185 dollars for a "new" oem with no warranty?

It was listed as "new" with a three year warranty on the website. The invoice indicates otherwise.

Company is "ServerTEch Solutions, Inc" in Florida.

The memory which was never really good, and OCZ's division now only RMA's SSD's pretty much, so the ram is in the trash.

I also discovered a Seagate 1.5 gig drive has gone south, and with it my entire Sean Connery collection.

Fun computer day...


Amazon typically takes things very seriously if you believe you've been wronged by a Amazon 3rd party vendor. I would recommend you first try to resolve this with the seller and if you get no response and can't get the problem fixed, email jeff@amazon.com. Jeff Bezos does read complaints and they become high priority for Amazon staff to resolve. I've seen cases documented regarding Jeff taking action to solve the issues most recently being the issues regarding Mediabridge. Amazon revoked their privilege to sell through Amazon.
 

Handruin

Administrator
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Messages
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Only buy Amazon products direct from Amazon. There are so many shady characters out there selling used or OEM drives that have no end user warranty.

There are likely some bad sellers through Amazon but I don't feel the advice to only buy direct from Amazon is good. I've purchased many different things from 3rd party sellers through Amazon over the years and have not had an issue with any of them so far.

My most recent encounter with a 3rd party seller was so good that I even updated my rating on their feedback page because they resolved the minor complaints I had. I purchased a simple $15 case for my HTC One M8 and notice a couple flaws. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars and wrote up a review about the case in which I included my two annoyances. There was an issue with the case causing a problem with the flash. The Amazon reseller contacted me via the review page and when I emailed them my order number, they sent me a new case. I didn't have to return the old one (I asked). They had revised the design to fix the problem. The new case arrived and it was exactly the same. I wrote them back explaining the issue and they sent me a 3rd case, this time fixing the issues. Now I have three cases and they never wanted the old ones back. They went above and beyond to help me resolve the issue.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,497
Location
USA
Isn't there some consumer law in the US regarding:
1. False advertising? The product is not as decribed.
2. You can't offer a "new" product without warranty?

I know in Australia, both of the above practices (whilst do occur) are illegal. You have the right to return a product (within a reasonable period of time) if it's not exactly as described or if you knew the conditions you would not have purchased it, and all "new" products have an implied warranty.

Yes, but often it is not feasible to get anything from the small-time crooks. Amazon will look into it and purchases have some protections through credit cards as well. However, it's better to buy from reputable sellers unless one has a lot of free time to deal with all the hassles. In the US New York, particularly Brooklyn is notorious for the crooked photo/electronic stores. They are constantly going out of business, then coming back with other company names and owners, etc.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,278
The problem is the lack of information supplied in the adds:
For Example:

"
WD RE4 2 TB Enterprise Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA II, 64 MB Cache - WD2003FYYS
by Western Digital
218 customer reviews
| 4 answered questions
List Price: $449.99
Price: $109.00 & FREE Shipping
You Save: $340.99 (76%)
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by New World IT.
"
I start digging further:

"
$109.00

& FREE Shipping
New
New bulk 90 day warranty SHIPS SAME DAY BEFORE 3 PST!! New Day ~ New Technology ~ New Solutions

95% positive over the past 12 months. (1,916 total ratings)

Ships in 1-2 business days. Expedited shipping available.
Domestic shipping rates and return policy.
"

Looking at the list, not ONE of the shippers has the property warranty length on the drive:

"
$108.00

& FREE Shipping
New
WESTERN DIGITAL WD2003FYYS 2TB SATA 3.5" HARD DRIVE ***SHIPS SAME DAY BEFORE 6:30pm***1 YEAR WARRANTY***500 PIECES IN STOCK**... » Read more

95% positive over the past 12 months. (1,449 total ratings)

Ships in 1-2 business days. Ships from FL, United States. Expedited shipping available.
International & domestic shipping rates and return policy.
Add to cart
or

Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
$109.00

& FREE Shipping
New
New bulk 90 day warranty SHIPS SAME DAY BEFORE 3 PST!! New Day ~ New Technology ~ New Solutions

95% positive over the past 12 months. (1,916 total ratings)

Ships in 1-2 business days. Expedited shipping available.
Domestic shipping rates and return policy.
Add to cart
or

Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
$119.00

& FREE Shipping
New
3 YEAR WARRANTY 100% SATISFACTION GUARANTEE 20 YEARS IN BUSINESS

93% positive over the past 12 months. (69 total ratings)

Ships in 1-2 business days. Ships from CA, United States.
International & domestic shipping rates and return policy.
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$120.00

+ $5.49 shipping
New
NEW BULK PACKED DRIVE, SHIPS WITHIN 24 BUSINESS HOURS!

89% positive over the past 12 months. (833 total ratings)

Ships in 1-2 business days. Ships from FL, United States. Expedited shipping available.
Domestic shipping rates and return policy.
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$138.00

& FREE Shipping
New
New Bulk 30 DAYS WARRANTY AGAINST DOA

313 Technology

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$160.00

& FREE Shipping
New
SAME DAY SHIPPING UNTIL 6PM PST *** 1 YEAR WARRANTY *** 100% CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IS OUR GOAL!

98% positive over the past 12 months. (2,329 total ratings)

Ships in 1-2 business days. Ships from CA, United States. Expedited shipping available.
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$166.00

+ $7.57 shipping
New
New Pull - 1 Year - Manufacturer - Ships Same Day if placed before 2PM PST

100% positive. (6 total ratings)

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$174.99

+ $5.42 shipping
New
New WD Western Digital Enterprise RE4 2TB 7200 RPM SATA Drive WD2003FYYS

92% positive over the past 12 months. (705 total ratings)

Ships in 1-2 business days. Ships from NY, United States. Expedited shipping available.
Domestic shipping rates and return policy.
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$198.99

+ $5.48 shipping
New

87% positive over the past 12 months. (13,562 total ratings)

Ships in 1-2 business days. Ships from TX, United States. Expedited shipping available.
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$199.00

+ $6.00 shipping
New
NEW BULK 90 DAYS WARRANTY IN STOCK

97% positive over the past 12 months. (493 total ratings)

Ships in 1-2 business days. Ships from FL, United States. Expedited shipping available.
International & domestic shipping rates and return policy.
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"

At least Newegg lists the proper warranty, and usually backs it up.

GS
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,278
The problem is the lack of information supplied in the adds:
For Example:

"
WD RE4 2 TB Enterprise Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA II, 64 MB Cache - WD2003FYYS
by Western Digital
218 customer reviews
| 4 answered questions
List Price: $449.99
Price: $109.00 & FREE Shipping
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In Stock.
Ships from and sold by New World IT.
"
I start digging further:

"
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New bulk 90 day warranty SHIPS SAME DAY BEFORE 3 PST!! New Day ~ New Technology ~ New Solutions

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"

Looking at the list, not ONE of the shippers has the property warranty length on the drive:

"
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WESTERN DIGITAL WD2003FYYS 2TB SATA 3.5" HARD DRIVE ***SHIPS SAME DAY BEFORE 6:30pm***1 YEAR WARRANTY***500 PIECES IN STOCK**... » Read more

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New bulk 90 day warranty SHIPS SAME DAY BEFORE 3 PST!! New Day ~ New Technology ~ New Solutions

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3 YEAR WARRANTY 100% SATISFACTION GUARANTEE 20 YEARS IN BUSINESS

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NEW BULK PACKED DRIVE, SHIPS WITHIN 24 BUSINESS HOURS!

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New Bulk 30 DAYS WARRANTY AGAINST DOA

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SAME DAY SHIPPING UNTIL 6PM PST *** 1 YEAR WARRANTY *** 100% CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IS OUR GOAL!

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New Pull - 1 Year - Manufacturer - Ships Same Day if placed before 2PM PST

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New WD Western Digital Enterprise RE4 2TB 7200 RPM SATA Drive WD2003FYYS

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NEW BULK 90 DAYS WARRANTY IN STOCK

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"

At least Newegg lists the proper warranty, and usually backs it up.

GS

So, here goes:

Hi Jeff
I'm trying to find a hard drive to buy through Amazon.

Here is the result of my first attempt:
"
1.0 out of 5 stars OEM, no disk with computer program to format GPT, invalid serial number, and no warranty, according to HGST. Mechanically ok, June 7, 2014
By Aristotle
This review is from: HGST Deskstar NAS 3.5-Inch 3TB 7200RPM SATA III 64MB Cache Internal Hard Drive Kit (0S03660) (Personal Computers)
HGST 3.6 gig arrived yesterday. Spent most of the day trying to initialize the entire disk. ...
The bad is the drive is oem, has an invalid serial number and no warranty. Testing Amazon's return policy on this one...185 dollars for a "new" oem with no warranty?

It was listed as "new" with a three year warranty on the website. The invoice indicates otherwise.

Company is "ServerTech Solutions, Inc" in Florida.

...

I also tried formatting the disk through command prompt, Disk Management, and the OS. Know what you are getting yourself into
when you buy one of these big drives."

After research, I decided on a WD RE4 drive. It has a 5 year warranty when new:

"Here is a copy of the e-mail that you sent to Serverpartdeals.

Order ID 116-1418003-3021846:
1 of WD RE4 2 TB Enterprise Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA II, 64 MB Cache - WD2003FYYS [ASIN: B002XW44QY]

------------- Begin message -------------

Hi

You list the item as new. If it's new, it has a 5 year warranty.

"
$109.00

& FREE Shipping
New
New bulk 90 day warranty SHIPS SAME DAY BEFORE 3 PST!! New Day ~ New Technology ~ New Solutions

95% positive over the past 12 months. (1,916 total ratings)

Ships in 1-2 business days. Expedited shipping available.
Domestic shipping rates and return policy."

For the price I expect a drive with the full warranty, not a 90 day warranty.

This is bordering on fraud, and is certainly misrepresentation.

Please cancel my order, and refund my money.

Sincerely
Gregory Santilli"

I've always trusted amazon.com in the past. However, when I look further on this item, not ONE of the resellers you list has the warranty correct. Most offer a 90 day warranty, or something similarly absurd. Worse, when the HGST drive came in, the invoice was explicit in changing the terms to a 3 month warranty, from 3 years.

Now I have 300 dollars out, no drives, and not one of your resellers offers the product I want, with the 5 year warranty. I can't even find a hard drive with a 5 year warranty, even if it's listed by the maker, your resellers claim the warranty is much less.

On top of this, it's become a common practice for your drive resellers to list the add one way, then ship a non-conforming drive. Read the reviews of the HGST drives in particular, and it's becoming standard practice.

Unless I can get this resolved, I better take my business somewhere else.

Sincerely

Gregory Santilli
 

sechs

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
4,709
Location
Left Coast
Yes, but often it is not feasible to get anything from the small-time crooks. Amazon will look into it and purchases have some protections through credit cards as well. However, it's better to buy from reputable sellers unless one has a lot of free time to deal with all the hassles.
I think that the key with Amazon is to buy only from sellers who ship from Amazon. That way, returns are much easier.

A to Z should protect you every other way.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,728
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Most of the time I make sure to buy specifically from Amazon, if that isn't possible I look for those who ship through Amazon. Everyone else I treat as though I'm buying from their own tiny website.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,278
Serverpartdeals????

Counter offer:
Which option would you take?
"
Hello,

I have confirmed with my sales team that this drive is not used, but was just manufactured in 2012. The drive you have now is covered by a warranty through us directly. If you chose to keep that drive, we can refund you $30.00 and the warranty will be valid through us for three years from the purchase date. We can also send you a replacement drive with a new date stamp and warranty through Hitachi directly, or we can refund you for the drive.

Because the drive is not used, and has a low failure rate, so we would not be able to offer you the drive for $50.00 or less.

Please let us know how you wish to proceed.

Thank You,

Jen
"

Dont know anything about this company. Can't find much. Suggestions?

Are they going to be in business in 3 years?
What are they going to do for a warranty???
 

jtr1962

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Jan 25, 2002
Messages
4,373
Location
Flushing, New York
In the US New York, particularly Brooklyn is notorious for the crooked photo/electronic stores. They are constantly going out of business, then coming back with other company names and owners, etc.
Most of those stores are fronts to move stolen/counterfeit merchandise. They operate under one name until the authorities are on to them, then shut down and start up the next day as a different business. If the authorities come to the store to address prior consumer complaints, the store owners will just say the prior owners packed up and left. You'll often even have loosely connected "associates" switching between locations as these stores change names so the authorities don't see the same faces at the same locations.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
22,275
Location
I am omnipresent
Amazon's internal return policies are really simple. In most cases, they just give you your money back and pay for return shipping. In rare cases, they charge you a restocking fee. I really never buy electronics from third parties selling through Amazon and straightforward returns and fast shipping are the main reasons.
 
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