Are Cheap Used HGST Hard Drives Any Good?
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2022
- In this video I discuss if it makes sense to buy used HGST hard drives. HGST drives in both 4 and 6 terabyte versions are commonly available on sites such as eBay and Amazon. I decided to buy some to see if the were any good. As a disclaimer I am not an expert in any of this, and I would only recommend putting important data on drives like these if you have a backup of said data.
Software tools used in this video:
CrystalDiskInfo
crystalmark.info/en/software/...
CrystalDiskMark
crystalmark.info/en/software/...
H2testw
h2testw.en.lo4d.com/windows
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For people who find this video, one thing to consider is that HGST is pretty specifically an Enterprise brand (or was), not a Consumer brand. This usually implies higher quality.
MORE IMPORTANTLY, what I have found is that every single HDD that has a sleep mode has died. Every. Single. One.
Now I use a small utility called "NoSleepHD" that I configure to write to an empty TXT file every nine minutes, since Sleep Mode usually occurs at ten minutes. I also leave my computer running 24/7.
Since using this tiny utility, I've never, ever had a hard drive failure.
That's from a 100% failure rate across multiple drives to a 0% failure rate. Because these used drives likely had a 100% up-time, I would trust them, but that's just my opinion...
Agreed
what do you mean by "died"? I'm planning on buying a few for my home NAS
wow! I do same thing (a bash script in /etc/rc.local) for my hgst 2.5" 500Gb hdd on my openwrt router.
Thanks for the review and analysis! Was seeing these pop up online and wondering how good they are as the value is just unbeatable. You helped clear a lot of doubts!
I've been buying used hgst drives for years now. Just bought 7 x 10tb for $50 each!
Wow that's some pretty awesome prices, I can't seem to find those in europe unfortunately, found a 10x4 for 100€ (all of them) but they're sas so idk
that is a pretty good price. I haven't seen 10tb less than 70.
I have 8 and they've been powered on for 3 years. No problems at all. Planning on getting another 8 bay and 8 more. Thanks for the video
I have literally HUNDREDS of "used" HGST enterprise model hard drives - teh older ones, 2 and 3 TB models, have had *1* die in the 6-8 years I've had the 15 or so.
The more recent drives, mostly 14TB with a few 8 10 or 12 TB models, have had *2 drive out of well over 200 - but I've only had those for an average of about a year.
The WD "Ultrastar" line are the SAME drives - WD bought out HGST about a decade ago, but were forced to operate them as a "separate" company for most of that time - they finally were allowed to fully merge them in a couple years ago or so.
I also have a few "used" Toshiba enterprise model drives, that have also been reliable so far - a couple of those are pushing 15 years old.
what are you using them for, trying to gauge intensity and use case
@@javajav3004 I have had a lot of them as boot drives, the rest used in Boost and Chia mining.
Much lower intensity on writes, comparable to many but by no means most drives in a server on reads.
They also never spin down - which HELPS on their lifetime, that's the worst thing you can do to anything electrical mechanical OR electronic is frequent on/off cycles (even once per day is bad).
It would be a near-perfect use case for Shingled Magnetic drives.
@@bricefleckenstein9666 Fantastic, thanks a lot amigo
@@bricefleckenstein9666 Thanks amigo thank you so much
Really nice deal duuud, congrats!!!
Very useful video, thank you!
Very cool review. Looking at comparing the used 6TB Drive route versus LTO-7 Tape Storage. The Price to Value get's dicey when you think about a hard drive being 5+ years old.
I would think the hard drives versus tape decision would be driven largely by use case. If you are looking for backup solution you don't intend to access very often, the tapes are probably a better idea. If you need to access or change data semi regularly, using hard drives would likely be much more convenient. Though the tapes would almost undoubtedly be more reliable.
depends. for most people who just need a few TB, you can safely set up RAID and replace drives occasionally when they fail.
I've bought these cheap HGST/Deskstar "(Renewed)" drives from Amazon in the past (smaller 2 and 3TB drives) and they work very well. I've only had one SMART alert popup about overheating. When I check the drives I can't even see which one had the SMART error... I didn't even think SMART error would go away or correct it self. Regardless they are running inside my homemade NAS 24/7 operating just fine.
Use fans to blow the heat off. HDD hate hot and cold
Thank you for the video! looking for some drives for my Unraid NAS.
My 120 tb zraid6 zfs file, streaming and game server uses 24x 12gb/s sas 6tb ultrastars, that have around 8k hours on them. They've treated me great other than the single 80k hour drive in the array giving me occasional hiccups. It's always recovered itself- but I've got a few cold spares when it fails for good.
I've also got another array with 24x HGST 2tb Sata drives that have 130k hours in only 40 power cycles- and I haven't had any problems with them yet.
I switched to the HGSTs after buying nothing but WD Blacks for 15 years prior. The blacks have gotten really unreliable over my last 12-15 new drive purchases. I still got nothing but love for the original black 1tbs I've got with 120k hours on them and no problems. I'd take one of those over a new WD any day of the week!
I have one and they are excellent. Mine was from a Taiwanese server and still going strong after 4 years I purchased it. HGST is the best HDD brand
Thanks for the info. Have they held up?
I have one of these. I wouldn't use it for a system drive for the long run because it's very noisy and gets hot and is very slow to boot/load games but for archival storage works good.
Great Video
Ordered 8tb for $50
$40CDN, low health they said. I got 4 and gonna run them in a raid 6. hope runs great for you!!!!
Very good video. the power on hours would be the age of the drive? Mine doesn't have date of manufacture.
I bought two of them a week or so ago for a NAS I just set up. They worked perfectly so far. I've bought two more that should arrive tomorrow, I will use these for my back-up drives. Price is great, the ones I bought last week have a 3 year warranty, and the ones that are arriving tomorrow have a 5 year warranty. I've been told, the longer the warranty, the newer the drive is. I don't know if that is true.
The warranty claim shipping is very costly, is it worth? No !
If data has been backed up, these hdd are for play play... 🍻
I am I wrong that the pick bubble aint no static bag?
ie It might produce little static but it offer no protection from static.
In 2019 I bough 2 on amazon supposed NEW they looked a bit used seller gave a separate waranty not in original package and they were both 2013 escalate to amazon with pictures. Both refunded They were marked from Dell but HGST.
I’ve bought used Deskstars and Ultrastars, and they are really loud. They also run warm too.
Edit: $20 down the drain, the Deskstar is throwing spin up errors. Do not buy from EMSA.
I bought two 2TB HGST drives from goharddrive in 2014 and they are still going strong. I had to retire them because I need more space. It sucks I have to dump them because they are great drives but not enough capacity
I will give you interesting points:
Disk platter surface also goes old. If you test by writing file, reading back, it will look fine, as charge on each sector is fresh.
But after few years, reading that sector can give error.
Use HDD-Scan utility to do read scan and check if many sectors have higher read times, like 100ms or more. In that case, means hdd has trouble reading and may even be doing data recovery internally to retrieve the data. Indicates surface quality degrading.
Such corruption in filesystem is hard to detect. A trick would be to store the files in zip archives, you can use 'Store' option to avoid compression. Zip archives have CRC checksums and if it gets corrupted, it will indicate it when you extract.
Do not make extremely large archives, if it gets corrupted, you can lose all files.
Advantage of zips is that small files are added into one file and writes to hdd are continuous, with less seeks and tear.
Filesystem can also show sizes and file count faster when you have less files.
Or use tool like ExactFile to write in each directory a checksum file, with MD5 signatures. You can later verify files are still correct.
Good. I just bought an old HGST drive with a deleted SMART and the vast majority of sectors sits in "< 20ms"
great insight , thank you. how about multipar against zips
I just ordered a HGST 12tb drive today. Heard they were most reliable. Recertified with 2 year waranty...will see if they are gud...
I have 5 of them. 1 failed after 2 years. Started clicking. $$$$ to recover. The outer foil is laser welded. You can't just take it apart by removing screws.
Be careful about warranty... those may be "in warranty," but if you go up against the seller because of drive failure, then you basically have to prove negligence on part of the seller and defective hardware.
Unless they explicitly state warranty with TERMS listed in plain words in their "seller terms" THEN maybe you have a chance to get the drive replaced. After two years the only proof you have is in your complete documentation of the purchase.
how is it
@@javajav3004Been working great, but it makes some noises which been told is normal. No issues so far.
@@tigerbalm666sounds good ty
I only at least 4 of these hgst drives and they still going great
Hey I watched your video all the way true, really interesting!
I bought one if these drives before I looked into it, may I ask what do I need to run one of these drives? I've just got a regular pc and I've never seen the connection of the drive before.
Sorry for the noob question 🙈
You need a power connection from the PSU and a sata connection to the motherboard.
Thank you
is western digital still making hgst quality drives but just renamed as western digital? or have they started cheapening the drives?
no they are not, whatever HGST had all of them is merged with WD. If HGST drives exist, they are just a re-brand and basically a WD. This might be because a OEM, Cloud Hyperscaler etc might have a contract with the original HGST name so they still get the drives from "HGST"
no HGST was always kind of HITACHI HGST and hitachi makes each other drives all my HITACHI hdd have the HGST tag on them i believe is japanese capacitors.
On ebay, I got a 6 tb for $36 and a 8 TB for $43. I have no complaints :)
link for 8tb?
Concerning the reliability of the drives, I looked at a site that claimed the early generation drives should be good for a million hours and the second generation for two million hours, (I don't have any 2nd gen drives). The earliest my Hgst drive was manufactured around 2011. If they ran 24/7 for nearly 11 to 12 years, that would be somewhere around 90 to 100,000 hours. Based on the overall time, that tells me about 90% of the drive life expectancy still remains. Well... I hope at least. That tells me to go for it and save a ton of money.
MTBF is not same as life expectancy. Google tecnical docs about them. From my experience the life expectancy is from 20 000 hours for low-end laptop hard drive that is carried around or WD Green or Blue drive that have the head parking antifeature. For high-end drives the life expectancy is about 60 000 to 80 000 hours but some of them can go almost indefineatly.
i have a 1tb been using over 10 years as well for just files and a small amount of gaming, if its just sitting on windows and maybe loads a few files sometimes they can last well over 10 years.
That's MTBF or estimated time when 30-something drives will still be working out of 100
False information.
It's just hit or miss. I had a couple WD drives fail on me, as well as one or two Seagate drives over the course of 20 years. But there's one 160 GB Seagate hard drive that I'm still using to this day as a "temporary trash data network share" and it still runs fine. Why am I using it? Just because I find it funny it's still running with 0 reallocated sectors.
I think, I got that one somewhen around 2005-2008.
I bought new hard drives, used hard drives. I've used them in high utilization NAS systems (with ZFS, etc.) and they work. The whole "dOn't bUy uSeD HaRd dRiVeS." crowd can go suck a dong. You can even buy refurbished / used hard drives with warranty on them, so I don't see a problem here, especially if you run them in a redundant RAID configuration and also have your backup routine sorted.
Any update on these? How are they holding up?
No issues so far
@@Eman2000 awesome, thank you
I have a 10GB IBM drive from 1999 that spins up and holds data fine. I still have files from when I was 9 years old on there. I got a samsung 640gb from 2010 running surveillance and same for an old 09 barracuda 1tb. Found a few old WD blues one laptop 500gb and desktop 1tb with less than 100 power on hours so yay free storage!
Also got a 20gb samsung laptop drive from 2005 that I just plugged in 20 minutes ago and wiped and partitioned it & its works fine. Probably use it to run pFsense on my old 09 acer netbook. I forget how much space pFsense needs but that should work hahaha
Yes I love them I got one that has over 60000 hrs from 2015
mine has 50k hours, no reallocated sectors or anything, still runs fine
HUH721212ALE600 the longest hrs tested 12gb drive and has a low record of dying legendary
You can be happy with a reallocated sector or two. So long as they don’t keep increasing in number
Hi
Does the sticker say Refurbished on the hard disk or do the manufacturers hide it?
I found a cheap hard drive in my local store, but the sellers in 3 stores claim that the hard drive is not refurbished, while in one they say it is. And in the picture on the label there are no stickers that it is, can the manufacturers hide it?
Thank you
You will have sellers state refurbished. However, there is no way to refurbish a helium enterprise drive in the traditional manner that is denoted through "refurbished". Which usually means there was a tear down with physical parts replaced and then reassembled. Refurbished in this specific case means previously used and pulled from service. Those drives are simply used.
If it is factory/manufacturer recertified the drive will be labeled as such, meaning it was produced and designated to a lot of drives with similar serial numbers. A percentage from the lot failed with the entire lot being sent back to the manufacturer to be labeled recertified. This is my understanding from researching these manufacture recertifications. I've only ever seen recertified drives with labels by seagate, though.
With any drive, used, or new, you want to check SMART data for reallocated sectors, and do extended runs checking for bad sector through a read/write process for general health of the drive. Hdsentinel can do this as well as many other programs.
Goharddrive and Serverpartsdeals are examples of reputable resellers with both seller refurbs (used) and recertified drives. Also "zero hours" means nothing as SMART data can be wiped. Sometimes, you'll get a drive with SMART data in tact still. In this sense useful data of the drive can be hidden and and recertified drives will almost always be wiped of this data.
I hope this helps.
@@RainiGarciaa Thank you very much for the detailed answer.
Only I'm still worried and annoyed by this, it seems that many manufacturers don't even put the labels "refurnished"
For example, I am looking at a wd 12TB hard disk, the price says that the hdd is remanufactured, it is simply twice as expensive as a new one, but I asked 4 stores and 3 claim that the disk is not refurbished! And the fourth says that it is.
And now who to believe?
The hard drive is the same in all stores, and there is no label on the profile picture that says refurbished, which means that the manufacturers can hide it.
And now I'm in a dilemma whether it's worth buying such a hard disk.
Or should I buy an 8TB Seagate SMR, which is almost the same amount of money.
@milospavic You will never find an enterprise drive that states refurbished on the label. Refurbished is interchangeable, synonymous, with used in this case. I'm not quite following you with your mention of the stores.
A recertified drive should not be more than new, and a used drive is usually slightly cheaper than recertified. I've bought serval used and recertified drives, and the prices are usually reflected as such:
Used/refurb $6-8/TB
Factory recertified $9-11/TB
When in doubt, just take it as being a used drive if uncertain. Seagate relabels their drive recertified. I can not say that WD/HGST does the same as I've only ever bought used refurbs from them. The certification process does not involve any teardown and swap of parts from my understanding either. The whole lots gets scrapped and resold sort of like liquidation pallets. What's good is good and what's bad is bad. This is why these resellers have such easy returns and warranties I believe. This last bit, I have no basis for other than anecdotal experience from purchasing these drives.
Just to clarify, used Enterprise drives will likely last you several years, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy a used drive as long as I test it extensively, has a warranty and a simple return policy.
Too, you do not want an SMR drive. Go for CMR.
Hopefully, this alleviates some of that frustration. But here is a link to a 12tb used HGST for some of the lowest price per TB from a reputable seller. I thought about purchasing another as my seagate 12tb (also used from the same seller) is 4tb from full. The return is simple and easy if you happen to get a faulty drive. This is likely your best bet if you had planned to purchase already. Just run the tests.
www.ebay.com/itm/156046813385?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=kE7Z0-UgRW6&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=oF0h-NjASVu&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
@@RainiGarciaa I found in local stores the same hdd with the same markings 12TB and it doesn't say "refurbished" anywhere, but I asked 4 stores and 3 told me that the hard drive is new packaged and not refurbished. And the fourth store says that it is refurbished and that it is impossible to find a "new hard drive" for that price.
I'm honestly worried if that's the case, why those stores didn't put refurbished in the description, because the price is low in my opinion.
12TB for about $150
Now let me ask, why are you against the SMR disc?
I wanted to buy an 8TB for about $130 new with a 2-year warranty.
SMR has some drawbacks as far as I understand, but they don't bother me. I certainly do not plan to download and delete data from it. But I plan to download and save the series...
@milospavic Unless you're deadset on purchasing locally, Goharddrive on ebay currently has 12tb hc520 enterprise drives that are, in my opinion, a better option. At least you know for certain what you're getting. At which point you could purchase two 12tb drives for nearly the price of your one 8tb new for redundancy. It has a 5-year warranty and easy return. Of course, this may only be relevant if you're in the US. I just realized YT doesn't allow links.
12tb for 150 isn't a deal, certainly if it's used. If it is an enterprise drive, it is almost with certainty that it is not new at that price.
If you are aware and content with the limitations of SMR, then by all means, purchase SMR. For me, the limitations are not justified in relation to the price of CMR enterprise drives.
Anyways, this is all I have to offer. I wish you the best.
In my experience,
HDD to get : hgst, Hitachi
HDD to avoid : Seagate, WD
HGST and WD are same company now.
2014, 78.000 hours 4 TB still running. Ventilated & standby mode when not used.
My last HGST is a 10 TB HUH721010ALE600 from 2018. These are like 10$ / TB (but half the noise of 2 x 4 TB)
U can also find some WD Purple 10 TB for this kind of price... Some say : opened, never used... OK at ur own risk bc storage conditions are critical : not as sealed & no Helium inside these.
i never had a HDD fail on me yet, i still have one 1tb hdd running after well over 10 years now
I bought a 4TB seagate SMR drive and it failed within 2 years
but my 1TB CMR WD Blue has lasted me over 10 years and still going strong!
Seems like these would be fantastic for a home media/nas/plex server in unraid
YES!
Im wondering if peeps are dumping these drives after mining CHIA.
the ones i bought are from 2017 seems to be decent drives
I don't trust used storage mediums. The previous owner could have gotten viruses. Sometimes they reside / persist in the firmware.
If you’re doing this you need to have functional raid 5.
I just bought two brand new, still sealed HGST enterprise drives at very very cheap prices. Other buyers confirmed that seller's items to be new and have zero hours in s.m.a.r.t. Hopefully they last long for me. 😍😍
No, they just cleared the SMART data, which shouldn't be possible. :/
Where do you order cheap refurbished discs?
Amazon, ebay
Bought 6 6TB drives, 1 died. Bought 6 10TB drives 2 died.
Do they keep running (aka 24/7) or do you often turn them of/on?
@@PowerRedBullTypology They were running in a nas that stayed on
I think is a good option for the common poorly people (joke) who cant affort the big new one hdds BUT if you are going to use in a minimal way of RAID in a NAS device RAID 1 ,RAID 10 or RAID 5 it depends of the case/hardware that you have or to plan to use these thisk to get this kind of solutions using these disk for saving/storage files with a minimun of safety without loose your kidney to affort the price of one single big "in storage" disk
Try to avoid using same model drives in raid/nas as they may have same problems and fail both at same time. A firmware or integrity check issue can corrupt on both drives at the same time. If you have a different model, there is a chance it will not be affected. Maybe even avoid using same tech, like helium.
I wonder if he ever checked how many miles were on the 6 TB drives? If an eBay seller will not tell me I don't purchase
You can usually ask and they will usually respond. I've gotten a couple with ~10 power on hours and i've also gotten some with 50k+ power on hours. It seems like the power hours are way higher when I bought from companies rather than individuals on ebay
some people reset the power on hours and sell it as new when its years old@@fallenkeith5885
my Hitachi xbox hdd outlived all of my ssds
9:34
Seagate drives always die!
I’ve had WD crap out on me too but I agree, Seagate has always been the least reliable in my experience
@@syberpunk Same. I used computers since I was 12 and I'm now 32. Most HDDs that actually failed in my life time were WDs. Not only did this happe to me, also to one of my friends. This made WD the "unreliable" brand in our IT friend circle and we only bought other brands like Seagate.
After some time, I decided it'd be time for new HDDs and got WD Blue ones, because they were relatively cheap. Two of them failed within a couple years. Got another one used, failed, too.
Not shitting on WD, will probably buy from them in the future. I just think it's random.
I've owned many Seagates for 10+ years. Never had one fail me yet.