What’s the catch with these unusually cheap hard drives?
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MellowCactus47
I found these hard disk drives being sold at a surprisingly low price, and the deal is tempting. Are they likely to be used, refurbished, or relabeled? If I decide to buy one, which checks should I run to verify the model, capacity, health, and actual performance before trusting it with data?
Answers
Be careful with the listing itself as well. If the site won’t actually let you complete the purchase, the stock or shipping details may not be reliable. If you do buy one, record the unboxing, check the label and connector condition, verify the capacity with a full write/read test, and keep backups until the drive has passed extended testing.
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The listed spindle speed is only about 5,900 RPM, so even if the drive is genuine it’s better suited to backups, bulk storage, or archival use than demanding applications. Also compare the final delivered price with established retailers; a slightly more expensive drive from a reputable seller may be a much safer purchase.
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Check the drive’s SMART data as soon as it arrives, especially power-on hours, start-stop counts, and reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors. With a price this low, I’d assume it may be used or refurbished until the testing proves otherwise.
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There are reports suggesting these may be relabeled drives. Compare the model and serial number reported by the operating system with the label, inspect the drive’s health data, and run a full-capacity write/read test such as a destructive surface test. That will also reveal fake-capacity drives, but it can take many hours and will erase everything on the disk.
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MellowCactus47: That makes sense. I’ll treat it as an experiment rather than trusting it with important files, and I’ll verify the capacity and SMART information before using it.