Ordered 10 3.5" 500GB HDDs. They came packed in a small box, like books.

[VirtualLarry]

No padding around them, just some very thin bubble-wrap shoved into the empty space in the box. HORRIBLE.

The worst part is, I paid $50 in shipping. Clearly, they could have, and should have, done better. For 10 drives, I expected an OEM case box with drive slots.

Damn china sellers. (I got fooled by "US Warehouse".)

Now time to test them. Or should I try to send them all back?

Edit: Wow. Just wow. Took one drive out of the anti-static bag (not original WD anti-static bag, I can tell), and plugged the drive into my dual-bay USB3.0 dock, that hasn't failed me yet.

Shows up as some insanely-huge drive, and when prompted to initialize it, it gives an error "Cyclic Redundancy Check".

Edit: Label says "AVDS", WD Warranty checker says "OEM warranty, not provided by us", and calls that serial number an "AVCS".

Wonder if the label is fake too?

Seller said "3 year warranty".

Edit: Well, the next drive wasn't so bad. It showed up as the proper size, let me initialize it, and is proceeding with a full format.

I guess I should have let the drives acclimate first? They were cool, but it wasn't freezing last night.

Edit: Second drive passed full format. SMART status from CDI showed it was indeed new, whether it got "rolled back", I don't know.

Third drive in full format now. The first drive I tried, was the one that was in-between two other stacks of drives, and had three big gouges / scratches in it. It was beat up pretty bad. I think (hope!) the other drives survived OK. Going to take some time to full-format all 9 of them.

Edit: Third drive PASSED NTFS full format. One strangeness, drive number two, showed 8192KB buffer, but the third drive showed >= 32MB.

Edit: Thought that most of the drives were going to survive. I got bold, and loaded drive number six and seven into the dual-bay dock at the same time, thinking I could format them both at the same time, and save time. (I've done that before.)

Well, neither one of them would spin up and be detected. I shut the dock off, pull drive seven, and finally got drive six to detect, but it was the impossibly-huge size, and failed CRC error when attempting to initialize disk again. Sigh.

These were the drives in the middle of the stack.

Edit: These last few I'm testing, show differing firmware versions, which is really weird, if they were part of the same mfg batch.

Also, CDI is showing 16384KB buffer size, 17.01H17 firmware, and 7200RPM!

Very strange, the variability I'm seeing in the firmware, buffer sizes, and even some of them are showing up as 7200RPM.

Maybe these are a variety of drives, that had their SMART wiped, and their firmware altered, along with the label. Or maybe WD did that, on their final production line, to make these into AV-GP drives, and shove them out the door, as OEM drives without warranty, just to get rid of asst. old stock.

Edit: Final total, seven out of ten survived, three were DOA and were recognized by my USB dock with some crazy-huge drive size (probably drive ID with all FFs) Those also weren't recognized as a drive by CDI.

 

[corkyg]

Caveat emptor, Larry.

 

[sdifox]

Told you to get the He10s

 

[jimbob200521]

Where did you order from?

 

[master_shake_]

sounds like they were removed from a computer upgraded and sold.

do they have some kind of oem sticker attached to them like a barcode or something?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I ordered them from newyorker1999 on ebay. They had thousands of feedback... (96.4%).

Anyways, when I ordered mine, it said "US Warehouse", but now the listing says "Varies" and "HK Warehouse".

Mine did ship from within the USA, via Fedex.

So far, two out of three tested were good. Packing job was absolutely horrid. I have some unboxing photos.





The drive that I tested first, that was totally hosed, was the drive on it's side in the middle. It seems certain that it was banged-up good.

The other drives, I think, survived. It will take a few hours to test all 9 of the others.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Shrug, get what you pay for.

Stop buying other people's garbage from ebay

 

[EXCellR8]

I get hard drives that are absolutely fine off ebay all the time, including the drives that are now in my NAS.

Just unlucky I suppose, but that's why you can ask for a full or partial refund and provide feedback.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Shrug, get what you pay for.

Stop buying other people's garbage from ebay

What do you mean by "garbage"? They were listed as New, with a 3-year warranty! I paid $50 for shipping, clearly, I did NOT get what I paid for. (I mean, as far as shipping goes. Surely, they could have affording to ship an OEM case with 10 drives in slots for me, for that price. Newegg's done that a bunch of times, even sometimes when the qty limit is 5, and I buy max qty. I'm almost assumed of getting one from Newegg if I order 10 drives at a time.)

Some pics of the "dead" drive. Three big dents.

 

[jimbob200521]

Can I ask what you're plan is for the drives? Large array of some sort?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Can I ask what you're plan is for the drives? Large array of some sort?

Nah, cheapest 500GB HDDs I could find on ebay at the time from a US Seller. Or at least, I thought it was.

Some forum members complained that the PCs I was building for people, didn't have enough storage for a pr0n stash...

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...ok-browser-build.2489151/page-5#post-38554050

So I bought bigger SSDs, and some HDDs to go with.

More seriously though, my original plan was Linux on a 16GB SSD, with 4GB RAM, with 0.5GB used for the iGPU, so that meant a 3.5GB swap partition created by the installer, which left like 4-5GB free for user data, but SSDs like to have some free space to operate properly and "breathe".

So I bought some 30GB Kingston SSDs, brand new, for ~$15 shipped, and then I bought some 500GB WD Green AV-GP drives for $10 and $5 ship. Which I thought was pretty cheap, and maybe slightly iffy. But if I get 9 drives out of it, that are good, I guess I'll call it pretty-much even.

I didn't really expect that the recipients of these machines need a pr0n stash, but they might want enough HDD space to dupe a DVD disc of family photos, for example. (The machines will have a DVD-RW drive.)

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What do you mean by "garbage"? They were listed as New, with a 3-year warranty!

Out of curiosity, what's the date of manufacture on those drives? Because I'd bet money those had their SMART data reset and you've actually been scammed.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Don't buy hard drives on eBay.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Because I'd bet money those had their SMART data reset and you've actually been scammed.

If they even went that far. A 500GB 3.5'' drive is not 'new'. Best case it's the manufacturer dumping stock of old crap into cheap drives. What did you pay for these? They're on amazon for $35 each (at least they have a return policy) with free shipping.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I just checked the warranty status on that drive (SN WMAV90718091). It's OEM garbage, just as I figured. There's no warranty for it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Out of curiosity, what's the date of manufacture on those drives? Because I'd bet money those had their SMART data reset and you've actually been scammed.

Maybe. They seem pretty darn spiffy, though, if they are used.

Date of mfg of the few drives I've tested, are all Sep. 2014, product of Thailand.

Remember, though, that WD recently re-did their branding, and moved all of their Green drives into Blue, and their AV-GP drives into Purple. Surely, they probably had a bit of stock of the prior Green-labeled drives. I figured that these cheap drives showing up at the bottom end of prices on ebay, were mostly NOS Green-labeled drives, found in a warehouse somewhere.

Though, considering that these shipped from Reno, and one of the other listings was from Las Vegas... maybe they are from casino surveillance setups, and some of the bigger casinos dumped their old stash of drives, and some "inventory reclaimer" wiped the SMART data, and cleaned them up. That though occurred to me too.

Would it be conceivable, that WD themselves might have auctioned off their existing inventory of "Green" drives, to the gray market (out the back door), and in the process, invalidated the serials by making them "OEM", so they wouldn't have to support them, and this vendor didn't know that?

Edit: But then again, there's the shrink-wrapped anti-static bag. Unless it significantly changes, after two years in storage, these bags don't tear open as clean as a real WD bare drive from WD themselves. It's a bit more rubbery, or stretchy on these bags.

So yeah, they probably had their SMART reset.

Edit: Then again, in favor of the NOS theory, if they all have the same production date code, down to the day, then they are probably from the same production batch. I would think "pulls" would have asst production dates. So far, they are all identical.

Edit: The anti-static bags actually do have the WD branding, logos, safety icons, etc., on them, just like a real WD drive. So now, I'm pretty certain that these are in fact new, probably NOS that got shifted into the grey market when WD re-branded their lineup of AV-GP drives to "Purple".

 

[VirtualLarry]

If they even went that far. A 500GB 3.5'' drive is not 'new'. Best case it's the manufacturer dumping stock of old crap into cheap drives. What did you pay for these? They're on amazon for $35 each (at least they have a return policy) with free shipping.

I thought that the drive mfgs were still making 500GB HDDs... no? I realize, most have gone to 1TB/platter or greater, but they still need a drive line to "dump" their bad platters, or maybe they're short-stroked. (Like a batch of NOS / zero-POH WD factory refurb 160GB SATA drives I got from Newegg, again for $15 ea., that were really short-stroked 500GB HDDs.)

I paid $15 ea. for these, shipped, so even if one is dead from shipping, I'm way ahead of buying them from Amazon.

You can get the 1TB WD AV-GP drives, "new", on ebay for $40.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've come to the conclusion that these are, in fact, New, and that I got a pretty decent deal on them, marred only by the poor packing practices of the shipper, which caused me to lose one drive to shipping damage (thus far).

 

[bigboxes]

This has got to be a troll thread. Why do you insist on building computers for the third world?

 

[Elixer]

I ordered them from newyorker1999 on ebay. They had thousands of feedback... (96.4%).

Anyways, when I ordered mine, it said "US Warehouse", but now the listing says "Varies" and "HK Warehouse".

Mine did ship from within the USA, via Fedex.

So far, two out of three tested were good. Packing job was absolutely horrid. I have some unboxing photos.





The drive that I tested first, that was totally hosed, was the drive on it's side in the middle. It seems certain that it was banged-up good.

The other drives, I think, survived. It will take a few hours to test all 9 of the others.

What the... who did they put in charge of packing these things? Looks like a 5 year old did it.

I am a firm believer of 'Never, ever buy hardware from fleabay'.

 

[VirtualLarry]

This has got to be a troll thread. Why do you insist on building computers for the third world?

LOL. Not everyone that owns a desktop, is a PCMR.

For example, I know of a couple people in this complex that are still running Dell PCs, with Core2 CPUs, and Vista for an OS.

Surely, an FM1 APU, with 4GB RAM, and an SSD, is an improvement. Granted, I plan on putting Linux on these to reduce costs, but if I put Win10 on (and probably boosted the RAM a little), then these would arguably be better machines than they're currently using.

Edit: But, bottom-line, these are donation PCs. For that purpose, I honestly don't think that they're that bad.

They've got an APU, with a halfway-decent iGPU built in for videos and desktop usage. (OK, gaming might be a stretch on a 1st-gen APU, but then again, gaming is seemingly always a stretch on an APU IMHO.) CPU performance could be better, but IMHO, again, it's adequate for web browsing and desktop tasks and watching 1080P videos on YouTube and burning DVDs. It's a "Big Core" CPU, with IPC equal or greater than Core2. 2.8Ghz isn't great, but it'll do.

4GB dual-channel RAM is adequate for basic tasks. (Most entry-level PCs these days, other than the "CloudBook" netbooks, have 4GB of RAM.) Dual-channel is better for the iGPU.

They're going to have a 30GB SSD. This is more than enough for Linux Mint 18 Mate, and also enough for Windows 10, if they later decide to install a real Windows OS.

I'm still debating on including the 500GB HDD, since I've double the size of the SSD, but I might still.

They have a DVD-RW, so they can listen to audio CDs, borrow DVDs from the library and watch them, and even copy discs if they are so inclined.

They also have both VGA, as well as HDMI outputs, so they could be used as HTPCs with a flat-screen, if the recipient already has a flat-screen TVs. (Given the vehicles that some of the food pantry clients drive, that wouldn't surprise me. Plus, entry-level 32" flat-screens are around $100 these days.)

I mean, I wouldn't try to sell one of these PCs to anyone on this forum, that's for sure. But for people that may not even have a PC? It's not a Pentium 4, people. Some people act like it is.

 

[Carson Dyle]

So you paid $150 for ten 500 GB drives, one of them damaged, shipped from bf China, when a new 5TB drive with warranty can be had for $153?

https://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Desktop-7200rpm-Internal-Drive/dp/B013JPLKQK

 

[VirtualLarry]

So you paid $150 for ten 500 GB drives, one of them damaged, shipped from bf China, when a new 5TB drive with warranty can be had for $153?

https://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Desktop-7200rpm-Internal-Drive/dp/B013JPLKQK

I guess you haven't been reading the thread at all. These drives were for budget / donation builds. Also, they were shipped from Reno, NV.

Unless you know of a way that I don't, how to easily sub-divide a single 5TB drive into ten pieces to use for separate builds, then I'm going to continue to keep buying multiple separate drives.

This isn't for "Cloud Storage". I'm not building a backblaze Storage Pod with 500GB Green drives, LOL.

Edit: Sorry about the LOL. For the record, these drives were intended for client builds, so I couldn't just buy one "big" drive. Otherwise, I would have. I've got some 5TB Seagate consumer drives in my TS-451 NAS.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I guess you haven't been reading the thread at all. These drives were for budget / donation builds

That was well down into the thread before it was mentioned, and why others also questioned why you were buying these drives.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That was well down into the thread before it was mentioned, and why others also questioned why you were buying these drives.

Sorry for not stating that initially. I can see now why people were questioning my purchase. They were not intended for a single machine or NAS.

(While I sometimes make foolish purchases, I'm not ... that extreme, that I would buy ten 500GB HDDs, when I need a single 5TB HDD. Though, I have argued buying two 5TB drives for $110 ea., rather than one 10TB drive for $525.)