In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by Banger:

Spotted two Ironwolfs on Ebay @ £60 each and seller assures me they are brand new in original packaging so have sent him an offer and he has accepted. Bound to hit some good drives eventually lol.

Didn't the last scammer say the same thing fella? 😎

Just marked them as brand new. Asked several questions and they took ages to dispatch (because from China) only just today the seller replied send back for refund. The Ironwolfs are located in Liverpool and may have Seagate warranty will have to check serial numbers when they arrive.

In reply to a post by Banger:

The Ironwolfs are located in Liverpool and may have Seagate warranty will have to check serial numbers when they arrive.

Third time lucky, I'll keep my fingers crossed for you fella but having followed this thread for some time now it does seem your determination to get a bargain leads you to bad/dishonest sellers. Sometimes its just worth paying the going rate and buying these sorts of things from a reputable company. I'm not the first or second person in this thread who has hinted at that.

I am looking for a bargain. Can't resist Ebay but it's not a problem as they have the money back guarantee if it is not what the punter is expecting. Having said that the £30 WD Red from China AliExpress is due to be delivered tomorrow. So I will be forensically inspecting it.

😂

Might have scored a legit 3TB Red from China. Everything looks legit on SMART although an odd firmware is puzzling me so I have opened a ticket with WD to see if the firmware is legit. Grok reckons its cushty and possibly 95% likely a Grey Market or OEM drive. Hope WD get back to me soon. Have sent them pictures of Crystal Disk and Victoria. On the plus side the drive is recognised by WD Dashboard and WD Kitfox.

Still waiting for WD to check out the 2024 drives but a guy on the WD Community Forum reckons they are fakes as they have a Hitachi PCB (blue not green) with Hitachi part number. I know WD bought Hitachi a while back and it could be a new model with Hitachi Firmware only WD can confirm. The label says WD Red pro but performance matches a standard WD Red. WD Dashboard/Kitfox also recognises them as plain WD Reds. Have sent one back (the expensive one) as I didn't like the look of the latency spikes on the Victoria surface scan.

On the other front the Seagate Ironwolf 4TB ST4000VN006 still in original packaging I am told have shipped. So might see them next week.

Seagate aren't my favourite bits of spinning rust, but I must admit that the IronWolf 12TB drives I've got have been pretty solid workhorses....so long as you don't score get another knock-off 😅

I know what to look for now. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/seag...

Will be checking the Serial numbers on the Seagate site too.

Oh and Grok reckons the 2024 WD Reds are legit with an Hitachi influence since WD took over HGST apart from the label Red Pro and Red std. performance - explanation a factory mistake.

Edited by Banger (Sat 08-Mar-25 19:46:24)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Seagate aren't my favourite bits of spinning rust, but I must admit that the IronWolf 12TB drives I've got have been pretty solid workhorses....so long as you don't score get another knock-off 😅

i am not a great fan of Seagate either, but I do have a few of their external drives, a couple of 1TB, 1x4TB and 1x8TB and to be honest they have been okay.
Maybe the one I had years ago that failed on me twice, I was just unlucky with. When I had the third replacement, I gave it to a friend, and they had it in their computer for around 5 years. I went for WD after.

The spinny drive I have in my Windows machine is a 2TB Toshiba drive, have to be over 10 years old and still running well. I think that was one of the reasons why I went with Toshiba N300 drives for my NAS and also they have CMR drives. My only problem with them is that they don't seem to go to sleep, no matter what settings I have the NAS on.
I did toy with the idea of building my own NAS.

As for Banger and him trying to get a bargain, not sure if I would have the patience, prefer to pay a bit more and get something that will last and I am pretty sure is not fake.

I have found a tool for checking Seagates with, https://github.com/gamestailer94/farm-check