2TB refurb WD Green Drives

[Caesar]

Newegg has some 2TB refurb'd WD Greens for 79.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236432

I was thinking about picking up a few of these but the 90 day warranty is making me hesitate. What do you guys think about refurbs. I normally consider them as good or better than normal since all refurbs have gone thru some sort of testing.

 

[cyberjock]

I wouldn't trust them any more or less, as long as you are trying to break them before the 90 days are up. Someone included a bunch of steps recently for testing a hard drive, and I'd definitely do ALL of those before you use it just to be sure its reliable long term.

 

[ProtoSD]

When I think of refurbs, I think of all the DOA's that got returned, all the people that "borrowed" them and returned them, the one's that got RMA'd and had their error counts reset, etc. etc., then I ask myself how important is my data and is it really worth the risk.... I suppose you could get lucky :) It's tough enough trying to trust new disks, why gamble on one's that have already failed.

Just my 2 cents

- - - Updated - - -

Someone included a bunch of steps recently for testing a hard drive, and I'd definitely do ALL of those before you use it just to be sure its reliable long term.

I vaguely remember that, any chance you can find it and we could sticky it, or add it to the FAQ at some point?

Was it PaleoN that posted it?

 

[cyberjock]

From jgreco:

So you start with a SMART conveyance test. Then you move on to a SMART extended test.

Then move on to what we call burn-in, prior to making any filesystems or anything.

Read all the data off each disk with dd. Write zeros to each entire disk with dd. Re-read all that data off each disk with dd.

Do each set of tests in parallel and watch to see if any of the disks are unnaturally slower than the others, a warning flag.

Then you make your filesystem(s). Then you run iozone in a seek-heavy manner. Then you keep that running a few weeks (no, seriously, weeks is on the short end).

If your system is healthy at the end of that, you've probably done as much as you can to ensure that the hardware is good.

I'd say if we can come up with the actual commands(especially for the IOZONE test) that would be even better.

 

[ProtoSD]

Thanks for finding that.

Here's some documentation on IOzone: http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Iozone

IOzone-examples/

I'm assuming the data read and written with dd isn't important, it's just more for putting the drive through some stress to see if SMART catches any errors.

NOTE: IOzone is already installed on FreeNAS, so the info on installing it in the link above is not necessary.

 

[cyberjock]

I'd definitely do the dd test. If a sector fails to write and then read the sector later that would be an good indicator of a bad sector. SMART test does a read, but its unknown if it actually verifies the ECC of the sector to determine if it can store data correctly. So I think that the best path is still what jgreco said:

1. Do the SMART conveyance test.
2. Do the SMART long test.
3. DD write the whole drive.
4. DD read the whole drive.
5. IOZONE test the drive. (I am unsure of what exact parameters would be best for this test, but I do understand the need to do some kind of seek test that isn't linear through the entire disk as a DD or SMART test is)

If we get lucky.. Maybe jgreco can provide his recommendation.

 

[HolyK]

At friday i got new 1TB WD Black (FAEX) as an replacement of my slowly-dying old WD Black (FALS).

After few write/read/speed tests, that new WD was totally crippled. Even windows was yelling on me that the disc is almost dead and should not be used :D


So be sure you will test these refurbished disks MORE than enough!

 

[Caesar]

Well I am planning on replace one of my vdevs (3x500GB) with 2TB drives and I don't have room in my NAS box to test the 2TB drives while keeping my pool online so I would have to use my windows box. Is crystal disk info a good windows app to test a drive. I dont mind testing the drives for days/weeks if that's whats needed.

Oh and I don't think I will go with the refurbs. I am planning on running these drives in my NAS for 3 years and I want them to be covered by a warranty for those 3 years so I can RMA them if they fail.

 

[HolyK]

CrystalDisk is NOT "testing" software at all! It is just "monitoring" software which will give you S.M.A.R.T data and some additional info about the drive.

If disk looks "OK" in crystaldisk it does not mean that it will not DIE in nex two hours (which is exactly what happened with my drive).

If you want to be 99% sure (nothing is 100% in IT !!) that disks are "fine", just follow cyberjocks recommendation. This will stress disks enough to see if they are "fine" or not.

Also i can recommend MHDD utility to see response-time and also faulty/time-out sectors ...