I admit they were way too cheap for what they are (like 15% cheaper than same-size Ironwolf), so I gambled it haha there were no indications that these drives were OEM or similar.
Back to issue at hand: since I can’t personally have the five years warranty on these, only the original purchaser can, and I have no way to know who they are and when they bought them, I should just return them, right? And maybe buy the next ones only from authorized sellers?
edit: also, now that I think about it, and before I make the same mistake twice, there’s no way I can get enterprise drives as a normal consumer, can I, at least not brand new? I expect any enterprise drives I can find will have the same issue, i.e. bought by someone else for servers or similar, and then resold, correct?
edit 2: actually WD sells enterprise drives on their website, so my previous assumption about it was wrong
Chances are enterprise drives will last far longer than 5 years easily in my experience, but in my opinion 15% off isn’t enough to justify not having a warranty. I see those sales often enough on legitimate drives.
Enterprise drive sales aren’t restricted in anyway, you just need to buy them from a reputable seller. I personally would avoid Amazon, there are tons of “deals” like the one you found on there and they don’t make it obvious. A legitimate seller example - https://www.connection.com/product/seagate-8tb-exos-7e10-sata-6gb-s-512e-4kn-fastformat-3.5-internal-hard-drive/st8000nm017b/41308811?cac=Result
I was a bit off, they were 15% cheaper than the Ironwolf on the same website/from same seller (156, not USD, vs 179, not USD).
For a better comparison, I went to WD’s official store and for what I spent on these two 8TB Exos (312, not USD) I can get two 4TB Red Plus (310, not USD). Can’t make a direct comparison with other Seagates because their “buy now” section redirects me to Amazon, which, as you said, is not the best since they allowed third party sellers, but on there the 8TB Ironwolf is 250 (!!).
As you already know, I’m not in the US so I can’t buy from there. Unfortunately, Seagate’s “buy now” section (which should be official retailers) brings me to either Amazon or other chains that don’t have much else besides portable drives.
At this point I have two options, really: try again the same online store (which is kinda like Amazon, many third party sellers), but getting Ironwolf, which should be more likely to be “legit”, and of course check them as well when they arrive, or settle for two 4TB WD Red Plus (which isn’t ideal as I’m already nearing 2.5TB total, but should allow me to get by a while longer) bought directly from WD.
edit: looking at the link you provided, I paid 30% less for my Exos. Would that sway you towards keeping it without warranty (apart from the seller’s, which is one year I think)? Mind that I don’t need enterprise-grade drives, and I think even NAS drives are overkill for my needs. For example a WD Blue with its 55TBW per year might be enough for me (that’s 150GB a day everyday for a year, which is above my average writes), but those don’t come big enough (I need 6TB min to be comfortable)
I’ve been buying used 8TB HGST SAS drives on eBay for $50USD each, so far no issues but I really don’t care if they die. Basically disposable at that price point.
That’s fair, I paid three times as much though so I do care a bit more haha
Hook them up, run a SMART test and see what their powered-on hours and error-rates look like. If it’s not a significant fraction of the MTBF, chances are you’ll be fine – assuming you’re using them in a RAID or ZFS array where a drive loss is not necessarily catastrophic.
Sorry for late reply, app kept saying “this account is being verified” and I coulnd’t comment or anything else.
Anyways, I kept them. One drive loss won’t be catastrophic (got two mirrored and also spare backup), so I decided to go for it!
They’re probably 5 years or older anyway, or do you know the manufacturing date?
Actually, I found something: “DOM: 07JUN2022”. I guess that’s “Date of Manufacturing”?
yep, looks good. should be new then, since they were still in packaging.
You have to decide for yourself if not having to send it back and the reduced price is worth not having a warranty from the manufacturer. does the seller have to provide warranty anyway in your country? I think this would be the case in my country, if the seller is a business, irrelevant what warranty seagate gives you
Some anecdotal evidence, take it or leave it :-) I have a 12x 4 year old Exos 7E8 (the previous generation) and I’ve not had any failure yet since I bought em. In the past, I had many (many many…) failed seagate drives but never within the warranty span
Sorry for late reply, app kept saying “this account os being verified” and I coulnd’t comment or anything else.
In the end I decided to keep them, considering the store provides warranty! Loving the gigantic storage amount I have now haha
