Need a 5TB or larger SATA drive for home lab server

[labtech]

Don't know what you mean by "contact with the actual vendor". The seller was Amazon, not a 3rd party.

That video was interesting, but not really related to this problem.

More specifically, I meant to imply that Amazon itself is not a hard drive manufacturer nor a known reputable hard drive distributor like newegg for example (those guys could get sloppy occasionally, too). Amazon may be the "seller" on the product description, but not really. It truly only means that "the order is fulfilled by Amazon" on behalf of another vendor, who are those proficient scammers.

Amazon is wild wild west pretty much. The system for verification of authentic products is weak, especially in electronics.

Which takes me to the video link illustrating just how easy it is for vendors to trick Amazon through fake reviews, product misrepresentation, along with ease of prevailing any Amazon penalties though creation of new accounts at a high volume.

 

[Porthos]

DM series drives

I have replaced more of them than any other, Does not matter the size. But most are the 1tb sold with many OEM desktops.

 

[Porthos]

Amazon may be the "seller" on the product description, but not really. It truly only means that "the order is fulfilled by Amazon" on behalf of another vendor, who are those proficient scammers.

This^^

Amazon is wild wild west pretty much. The system for verification of authentic products is weak, especially in electronics.

Just as bad as eBay at times.

But like others, I buy 95% of my parts on Amazon and have been lucky I guess no issues.

 

[fencepost]

The problem with Amazon is "commingling" - look it up and you'll cut way back on your Amazon purchases. Basically, I can register with Amazon to sell Item X and say that I have 500 of them to sell. Amazon will tell me which warehouse to send my items to (whichever one has lower supplies), and when they get there they'll be thrown in with all the other inventory of Item X. Then when you order an Item X sold by Amazon, Amazon will ship one of the ones I sent in and handle everything else as an accounting matter. In addition, when someone elsewhere orders one "sold by Fencepost's Scammy Items and Fulfilled By Amazon," Amazon will ship one of theirs (or one sent in by yet another seller) from yet another warehouse.

This works fine as long as everyone selling items is honest. When you get someone not honest, they get their items into the supply chain with no real tracking of who contaminated the pool. Ordering from Amazon is like drinking from your local public pool.

As for buying a drive, take a look at Provantage. Given what the data recovery folks have said I wouldn't recommend a 5TB drive, but they do have 5 in stock of a 5TB Toshiba 7200 RPM drive that's likely very similar (other models are special order) at $135ish. That's the only in-stock drive with those specs. At the 6TB/7200 range you're likely looking at around $175ish but there are a bunch of options from there up to a few hundred.

 

[Diggs]

For HDDs, stick with even capacity (2TB, 4TB, 6TB, etc). Typically, the odd capacity drives are lower quality.

Someone questioning this statement? The statistics for odd sized drives are terrible. The 5 GB aren't quite so bad.

 

[Alexey]

Someone questioning this statement?

Based on your chart, Hitachi does

 

[fencepost]

I don't know enough about drive manufacturing to state anything with certainty, but the thing I'm not clear on is whether for some reason manufacturers have decided that they must get 1TB on each platter side? I'm not sure it makes sense to rule drives in or out based on capacity alone, it makes more sense to do it based on the internals of the drive itself.

I think I'd also question any manufacturing process that had a high enough failure rate to make a smaller-due-to-defects product viable.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I think I'd also question any manufacturing process that had a high enough failure rate to make a smaller-due-to-defects product viable.

Then you also question every CPU you've ever used. Intel doesn't manufacture 3ghz CPUs, they just make all top of the line stuff, and sell each CPU based on its performance after testing. Unless you bought top of the line, you're getting essentially failures.

 

[fencepost]

Then you also question every CPU you've ever used.

I thought about CPUs as I was writing that, though more in terms of the old Intel processors available in models with and without an integrated floating point unit.

I'm more surprised in terms of it being worth making a separate product. If the failure rates are that high, I could see making the "average" product that only uses 5 of the six platter faces or something like that, with the niche product being the one that had higher capacity. I'd also think that a reduced-capacity small production product with higher likelihood of quality issues is the kind of thing that companies might prefer to avoid.

"Sure they're going to have a crap reputation, higher warranty expenses and negative impact on our reputation, but think of all the drives we can sell!"

 

[Sky-Knight]

Or something with a far higher specification than you paid for. When fabrication is going well it's perfectly normal practice for high-speed CPUs to be relabelled (or even deliberately crippled) to allow them to be sold as lower-speed chips for which there's more demand.

Does anyone else remember the Celeron 300A that could consistently and trivially be run at 450GHz and beyond? Happy days.

Yes you are correct, I neglected to mention that the converse can be true to fill demand for lower end chips.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I thought about CPUs as I was writing that, though more in terms of the old Intel processors available in models with and without an integrated floating point unit.

I'm more surprised in terms of it being worth making a separate product. If the failure rates are that high, I could see making the "average" product that only uses 5 of the six platter faces or something like that, with the niche product being the one that had higher capacity. I'd also think that a reduced-capacity small production product with higher likelihood of quality issues is the kind of thing that companies might prefer to avoid.

"Sure they're going to have a crap reputation, higher warranty expenses and negative impact on our reputation, but think of all the drives we can sell!"

I believe the answer to that is marketing. OEMs have a budget to hit to make the retail price point something that will sell. An extra $30 in the drive cost can throw that out. And don't get me started on the insanity that is direct retail sales.

TLDR, more options means more sales, which means quarterly numbers look good. In the end, that's all that matters to a publicly traded corporation.

 

[timeshifter]

You won't believe what I did... I ordered another drive from Amazon! This time I ordered the 6TB model Toshiba.

What I noticed:

• the box had a circular clear piece of tape that sealed it, like we've all seen before. The fraudulent drive didn't have that, nor did it look like it had ever had a piece of tape there.
• the new 6TB drive label looked normal
• the metal cover looked different
• when I installed it it didn't screech and click
• my system recognized it and I'm in the process of restoring 3TB worth of data right now

Out of all the things I've ordered from Amazon over the years this is the only time I've ever gotten screwed like this. And it's really not that bad as they were quick to refund. It's so easy to find what I need on their site and I know exactly when I'll receive stuff with Prime, sometimes same day, sometimes two days or next day for a couple extra bucks. That's probably the biggest draw for me - knowing when I'll get it.

 

[Sky-Knight]

You won't believe what I did... I ordered another drive from Amazon! This time I ordered the 6TB model Toshiba.

What I noticed:

• the box had a circular clear piece of tape that sealed it, like we've all seen before. The fraudulent drive didn't have that, nor did it look like it had ever had a piece of tape there.
• the new 6TB drive label looked normal
• the metal cover looked different
• when I installed it it didn't screech and click
• my system recognized it and I'm in the process of restoring 3TB worth of data right now

Out of all the things I've ordered from Amazon over the years this is the only time I've ever gotten screwed like this. And it's really not that bad as they were quick to refund. It's so easy to find what I need on their site and I know exactly when I'll receive stuff with Prime, sometimes same day, sometimes two days or next day for a couple extra bucks. That's probably the biggest draw for me - knowing when I'll get it.

And that's why I use Prime, you can cover most of your bases just by paying attention. But anything you buy has a serial number, just run it against the MFG's website to confirm validity. SSDs in particular make this easy because the little utility you can install does that junk for you. But I check all of them...

I've gotten fraudulent Windows OEM packs... Office packs... hard disks... cameras... you name it I've seen it. Amazon is always quick on the refund, and since I have a business account a quick phone call usually gets me free next day shipping to make it right. It's kind of hard to complain when they service it like that.

 

[Haole Boy]

As for buying a drive, take a look at Provantage.

Aside from the "commingling" issue discussed in this thread, what advantage is there in buying from Provantage? I just compared the price on a 1TB WD Black drive on both Provantage and Amazon. The Provantage price plus shipping is about $18 more than Amazon. (I have Amazon Prime so I don't pay for shipping on each item).

I've only had one problem with buying from Amazon over the years (wrong hard drive inside the box that had the correct label) and it was quickly and simply rectified.

Harry Z

 

[Alexey]

I'm not clear on is whether for some reason manufacturers have decided that they must get 1TB on each platter side

I think it just happened to be so for a while. So the rule should properly read "avoid drives with odd number of sides". You can probably figure out the density per side from spec.

 

[Markverhyden]

All I would have needed to reject this was looking at the received drive and comparing to the picture. A certain model hard drive will always look exactly the same, if it's not it's something else.