Thoughts on hard drives

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rb99

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#323125 29-Oct-2025 11:55

Need to get a couplend am trying to decide between two new 20TB Barracudas from PBTech, 2 year warranty, about $585 each, and two second hand 14TB WD Ultrastar drives from Go HardDrive, 5 year warranty, about $373NZ each.

Any thoughts / preferences ?

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99

Dynamic

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#3428767 29-Oct-2025 12:06

How much space do you need and what is your budget like? The price-per-gigabyte is similar for these two options.

What is GoHardDrive's return policy like and can you find any reviews? Shipping electronics to the USA can be very expensive for a consumer and make returning items uneconomic.

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rb99

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#3428773 29-Oct-2025 12:34

Budget doesn't really matter as existing hard drives are full. Certainly not unlimited though, hence why I'm looking at cheap drives, whether new or second hand.

Far as I can tell, its return at my expense,and considering a box to the USA, say 20x20x10cm seems to be almost $160NZ, thats more of a consideration than I thought, especially seeing as postage the other way, according to eBay is about $38NZ.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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Dairusire

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#3428780 29-Oct-2025 12:46

To be honest, as Dynamic has said it entirely depends on what it is you're needing.

Shipping back to Goharddrive, serverpartdeals etc will set you back a pretty penny.

I am not seeing the drive from Goharddrive for around 373NZ. I am seeing around $495-550 (plus GST for import)

So ease of warranty access aside, one thing comes to mind. Warranty length, on Barracuda is 2yrs, Barracuda/ironwolf pro models are 3yrs, and EXOS is 5yrs.

Regardless of where you get it from, to more than double the warranty period on what is probably a longterm storage device. Kinda worth it.

MDD drives are in-house recertified Seagate EXOS disks.

As for if you want recertified disks or not, that's entirely up to you but in my opinion, knowing the disk has been repaired and then gone on to be individually tested makes the fact it's 'second hand' a completely moot point for me, and as such I have well over 200TB of storage all on recertified disks.

demeter23

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#3428782 29-Oct-2025 12:47

I'm running 4 of the WD Ultrastars from Amazon (refurbished). Been running for over a year now with no issues, although price has jumped up (now $440).

rb99

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#3428788 29-Oct-2025 13:07

Pluses and minuses, pluses and minuses... WD - apparently higher quality, better warranty, cheaper but smaller, used and if it needs returning...

Barracuda, bigger, local, new but less warranty and apparently lower quality.

Existing drives were mostly bought new but with two used HGST 12TB's. Can't tell the difference.

The Ultrastar is this one (I attempted to include postage and GST) -

https://www.ebay.com/itm/155672990441?epid=18059743338&itmmeta=01K8KS462GJR35WR0QNG03HYXF&hash=item243ed552e9:g:gggAAOSwwB5mL~fg

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99

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#3428791 29-Oct-2025 13:18

Could also shuck ?

Probably doesn't do warranty any good. Never stopped me before though.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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Dairusire

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#3428792 29-Oct-2025 13:20

rb99:

Pluses and minuses, pluses and minuses... WD - apparently higher quality, better warranty, cheaper but smaller, used and if it needs returning...

Barracuda, bigger, local, new but less warranty and apparently lower quality.

Existing drives were mostly bought new but with two used HGST 12TB's. Can't tell the difference.

The Ultrastar is this one (I attempted to include postage and GST) -

https://www.ebay.com/itm/155672990441?epid=18059743338&itmmeta=01K8KS462GJR35WR0QNG03HYXF&hash=item243ed552e9:g:gggAAOSwwB5mL~fg

derp. I was looking at like for like 20tb disks. Makes sense.

honestly, I wouldn’t put too much weight in ‘x is better than y brand’. Each and every manufacturer has faults and failures and both have had major issues with their own releases. End of the day, if the drive fails within the warranty period which happens with either manufacturer, they’ll replace it.

If the drive that most closely meets the requirements then that’s the drive I buy.

Dairusire

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#3428793 29-Oct-2025 13:21

rb99:

Could also shuck ?

Probably doesn't do warranty any good. Never stopped me before though.

imho, not worth it to save the $50 per disk only to spend hours fighting for a warranty on a device that’s been disassembled.

rb99

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#3428797 29-Oct-2025 13:34

Oh well, guess I'll have to decide soon.

Thanks for the thoughts folks. No matter what I buy, I'm sure at some point I'll end up wishing I'd chosen the other option...

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99

fe31nz

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#3429080 30-Oct-2025 01:12

If you want a long lifetime, do not buy the cheap consumer drives like the Barracudas. For a decent new 20 Tbyte drive, the Seagate Exos ($895 on PB Tech) is the cheapest, and it is a full enterprise drive and in my opinion better than the more expensive "NAS" drives. Yes, it is a lot more expensive than a Barracuda, but I would not trust a Barracuda to last 5 years, and an Exos has a 5 year warranty and can be expected to last beyond 10 years.

Handle9

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#3429081 30-Oct-2025 01:37

I am running around a dozen refurbished hard drives across my servers and I just had the first one fail today. Given they were around half the price of new I can live with that.

I do carry a cold spare of each size (12TB and 8TB) in stock so I don't have too long out without parity protection as well as running a backup server. My backup server is currently rebuilding the failed drive.

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jm3

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#3429082 30-Oct-2025 06:42

Currently in the same boat needing to expand. Anyone have feedback on East Digital vs Go Harddrive...

rb99

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#3429277 30-Oct-2025 14:23

Finally reached the oh bugger it stage - gone for the two 14TB Ultrastars.

Still impressed how much used HDD's have gone up in price (fairly) recently...

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99