My own fault, seller had some known issues in feedback, but mostly they looked like buyer mistakes, anyway was on my watch list and seller sent me a 5% off offer, I countered with basically 10%, $75 each for a lot of HGST 6TB refurbs shipped free and they accepted. Drives arrived last week and I have been testing them for literally days. Again, some my fault, learning how to use the USB 3.0 sata adapters and downloading software, plus setting up a second PC to speed things up.
I opened my PC and brought out a sata power and data cables to one drive standing on its side on a cloth on my desk, and hooked up a drive to each of two USB cables, one on my PC, and one on the second PC. Lesson one, Win10 storage management doesn't appear to work on two devices at once, and if a format fails with the USB adapter it may not ever stop or report any error or other status. Those were a couple of frustrating and wasted evenings, but finally I got myself sorted and testing became a more or less orderly process, despite utterly annoying qualities of WD data lifeguard diagnostics, like windows that won't resize OR print, requiring prnt scrn, cropping in paint, etc.
Monday morning about 3am the last extended test completed and I had 2 bad drives, others seemed OK, a bit high hours, but not a concern to me with enterprise grade drives. One bad drive passed the WD tests, but has a crazy level of vibration, and no planned use had space for any isolators, additionally CDI and HDtune showed reallocated sectors. Second bad drive failed the WD smart test with Helium Monitor failed, and failed the WD extended test with too many bad sectors. I emailed the seller and went to sleep.
Seller reply is that he is a real experienced drive guy and they will work fine if I just use them. Thanks Fleabay, return label already printed. Now back to my apparently never ending drive shopping.
Bonus trivia point, WD data Lifeguard takes 5x 24hr days to erase a 6TB drive, don't put anything on them until you know you are keeping them.
I opened my PC and brought out a sata power and data cables to one drive standing on its side on a cloth on my desk, and hooked up a drive to each of two USB cables, one on my PC, and one on the second PC. Lesson one, Win10 storage management doesn't appear to work on two devices at once, and if a format fails with the USB adapter it may not ever stop or report any error or other status. Those were a couple of frustrating and wasted evenings, but finally I got myself sorted and testing became a more or less orderly process, despite utterly annoying qualities of WD data lifeguard diagnostics, like windows that won't resize OR print, requiring prnt scrn, cropping in paint, etc.
Monday morning about 3am the last extended test completed and I had 2 bad drives, others seemed OK, a bit high hours, but not a concern to me with enterprise grade drives. One bad drive passed the WD tests, but has a crazy level of vibration, and no planned use had space for any isolators, additionally CDI and HDtune showed reallocated sectors. Second bad drive failed the WD smart test with Helium Monitor failed, and failed the WD extended test with too many bad sectors. I emailed the seller and went to sleep.
Seller reply is that he is a real experienced drive guy and they will work fine if I just use them. Thanks Fleabay, return label already printed. Now back to my apparently never ending drive shopping.
Bonus trivia point, WD data Lifeguard takes 5x 24hr days to erase a 6TB drive, don't put anything on them until you know you are keeping them.
