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Comment by ping_pong | Hacker News Reader

Why did they stop buying WDC drives? Is there a known issue with them?

Also, why can't I find HGST drives for decent prices? On Amazon they are either refurbished drives or crazy expensive prices for new ones?

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> they are either refurbished drives

Just a heads up: there's no such thing as a refurbished hard drive. It's not economical. Instead, those drives are actually just used drives with the SMART counters cleared.

I've been personally burned by this.

So they're just rolling back the odometer, and destroying records of accidents (errors)?

Yes and no. It's more like they're "recertified". It's pretty easy and non-invasive to replace the logic board, which can fix many problems that might warrant an RMA. I've also gotten refurbs back from Seagate and WDC RMA's that have new top covers on the drive (evidenced by a new, non-retail sticker, no old sticker underneath it). Presumably they're doing some inspection of the platters and heads before sending them out. These drives came with a 30day warranty and cleared SMART data. But I would argue that its fair to reset the SMART data after this kind of refurbishment/re-certification.

That being said, there are definitely some sketchy drive resellers on marketplaces like Amazon who just clear the smart data on old drives and sell them as refurbished, or even new.

Recertified/Refurbished drives are never worth it IMHO.

I wouldn't pay for them, but I haven't found them especially unreliable when receiving recertified drives for RMAs of my drives.

> Why can't I find HGST drives for decent prices

Because they're discontinued, Western Digital rolled them into their server line, and people like me are snapping the remaining stock incase drives in our RAID die.

Western Digital bought HGST and those drives have some different branding now, I forget exact which.

Ultrastar

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