Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours • Hacker News Board

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#211

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #138

PaulHoule wrote: post #30

Those Exos drives have been popular with homelab types because they are usually $50-$100 cheaper than prosumer drives that claim to save maybe 0.5 W and 2-3 db of noise on the datasheet. (The latter could be effaced by a bad bearing anywhere in your build, I haven't seen either claim tested by a review site) It's funny but in this case the enterprise product is the cheap mainstream product and the 10-20 SKUs aimed at…

> claim to save maybe 0.5 W and 2-3 db of noise on the datasheet The huge issue here is that hard drive datasheets have gotten very inaccurate. They're not wrong , per se, but they tend to make very weak promises that ruin the ability to compare. Like if every car said "more than 10 miles per gallon".

I am skeptical about any claims about noise. I built two computers circa 2001 and read guides on Tom's Hardware and similar sites about how to build a quiet PC and to my schizotypal brain [1] the machines still screamed like banshees and I had to replace HDDs, fans, power supplies and such multiple times until I found parts that really were quiet. My take is there is a high variance in the noise of 'identical' parts, it just takes a bad bearing to produce an annoying squeak 15db or more above spec.

I'm also skeptical about claims about power. Performance loss is real, power savings might not be. I had a $3000 desktop which I couldn't stand to use when I set the minimum CPU low because the machine would go to a lower power state between keystrokes or when I was only moving the mouse around, so it would seem to take forever for characters to appear when I'd type. Granted, my schizotypal nervous system is bad at latency compensation, even when my condition is remission, but I've found trying to save power makes a $3000 desktop feel worse to use than a $300 Chromebook.

[1] particularly inflamed at that time

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#212

Post by jerf » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 4:24 PM UTC

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #181

jerf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"AFAIK, consumer protections are much worse in the US, so if anything it would be the opposite." Claiming you're selling a new product and then selling a used product is straight-up fraud. This isn't even a warrantee issue, and no, the US legal system wouldn't just shrug and go "Oh well". This is the sort of thing that penetrates any amount of verbiage in a EULA the company may throw at you, including any sort of dem…

Class actions are for lawyers. They will lowball how much damage was done and consumers will see $6 once all is said and done. I'm sure Seagate would rather not go through it, but the lesson for other companies will be just to get caught slower.

You'll note I called it a "corporate nightmare" and didn't describe as anything like the white horse coming to the rescue of the consumer.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#213

Post by tartoran » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #86

tartoran wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really surprised B&H has turned to this, they've been a very good retailer in my experience.

I've spent 5 figures with them over the last few years, and they've always been good to me too. I'm writing this off as a one-time mistake, but I really hope it doesn't become a trend.

Could also be caused by a bad employee doing shenanigans or a could also be a one off mistake. But it could be something B&H is doing to unsuspecting customers and that is terrible for their reputation.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#214

Post by tartoran » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

buildbot wrote: post #87

tartoran wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really surprised B&H has turned to this, they've been a very good retailer in my experience.

They’ve been sorta good, but rumors if things like this have been persistent for a decade. Photographers would get a few copies of a lens, and then return copies ones that were not up spec. B&H would allegedly just relist those as new, not open box. Many manufacturers don’t seal their boxes…

I heard some rumors though I'm not sure how widespread the issue is. So far B&H has had a pretty good reputation, maybe they changed management and whoever is in charge doesn't care about reputation, only profits.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#215

Post by floren » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 5:21 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #133

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #8

One way some companies and merchants deal with high inflation and increasing price pressure seems to be declining quality. I've seen similar things happening more frequently in different markets, not just tech. If you notice something like it, the best way to deal with it imo is ask for your money back, make it public if possible and boycott the business from then on. Customers need to penalize such behavior as much…

One example of this is Breyers ice cream. They are the oldest ice cream company in the US, had a great reputation, and heavily marketed that they only used high quality all natural ingredients until they got bought up by Unilever who stuffed it full of artificial ingredients and fillers to the point where they could no longer legally call their product "ice cream" and had to relabel their products as "frozen dairy de…

My recommendation is Tillamook. Their strawberry is fantastic.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#216

Post by Der_Einzige » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 6:12 PM UTC

floren wrote: post #215

autoexec wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One example of this is Breyers ice cream. They are the oldest ice cream company in the US, had a great reputation, and heavily marketed that they only used high quality all natural ingredients until they got bought up by Unilever who stuffed it full of artificial ingredients and fillers to the point where they could no longer legally call their product "ice cream" and had to relabel their products as "frozen dairy de…

My recommendation is Tillamook. Their strawberry is fantastic.

Their ice-cream is firmly mid. If you live in Oregon and want good ice-cream, try salt and straw.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#217

Post by Der_Einzige » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #133

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #8

One way some companies and merchants deal with high inflation and increasing price pressure seems to be declining quality. I've seen similar things happening more frequently in different markets, not just tech. If you notice something like it, the best way to deal with it imo is ask for your money back, make it public if possible and boycott the business from then on. Customers need to penalize such behavior as much…

One example of this is Breyers ice cream. They are the oldest ice cream company in the US, had a great reputation, and heavily marketed that they only used high quality all natural ingredients until they got bought up by Unilever who stuffed it full of artificial ingredients and fillers to the point where they could no longer legally call their product "ice cream" and had to relabel their products as "frozen dairy de…

This happens all the time with clothes too. Even the "made in england" dr martins are trash compared to old ones, and that's just one small real life example of a "they don't made them like they used to" boomerism.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#218

Post by floren » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 6:22 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #216

floren wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recommendation is Tillamook. Their strawberry is fantastic.

Their ice-cream is firmly mid. If you live in Oregon and want good ice-cream, try salt and straw.

I'm always going to suggest the long-running farmer cooperative. Salt & Straw is good (they have them down here in California too) but they're just a compelling buyout offer away from going down the Breyers path.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#219

Post by Joe_Cool » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 6:26 PM UTC

marcusb wrote: post #140

I had enough problems with new Seagate Exos drives (actually new, not remanufactured or whatever these folks ended up with,) that I've taken to buying used Western Digital Ultrastar drives on Amazon for my NAS. They're cheaper, and so far, reliable enough. I wrote a little more about my rationale[0], but, basically: 1. With RAID-6, I can take two drive failures, and it is quicker to get a replacement off Amazon than…

I also received recertified (sold as such and with proper labels and warranty) WD drives and more concerning:

4 fake WD drives that had failed SMART long self test with surface read anomalies and looked very banged up and used (scratches, stripped mounting holes). The SMART attributes had been reflashed to look brand new and the drives cleaned with isopropyl alcohol or something similar and relabeled with not too bad looking fake labels using OEM or old serial numbers. The antistatic bags were also not genuine WD. The disks contained a test pattern unlike brand new WD disk which usually only have 00s.

This is not a new thing. I think I bought them off Amazon marketplace in 2023. Returns for full refund were not an issue however once I sent photos and SMART errors.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#220

Post by Joe_Cool » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 6:32 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #206

bombela wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTRFS can handle zoned disks. The doc claims that it was a natural fit with the way BTRFS works. The problem is that you cannot buy host managed zoned disks.

WD was pushing for this standard a few years back: https://www.westerndigital.com/company/innovation/zoned-stor... I'm not sure what happened to it / whether it was successful or not.

I think they also sold HA-SMR (host aware SMR, a mix of drive managed and host managed) drives to datacenters but I couldn't find any recent news so I guess those aren't that common.