Hitachi GST Deskstar 4TB Internal SATA HD

I have to agree with the many others. I was intrigued by this deal and began reading… A refirb 4TB sounds great at this price. But, the only way I would buy this is if I could get a MINIMUM of 2. One as the workhorse the other as a backup. Or, even more in some type of RAID array.

LIMIT ONE? DEAL BREAKER!

Way off topic, but just putting this here for those interested. Data breaches and all that…Caveat emptor.

I just want to chime with everyone else… ONE?!?, Woot! go back to your roots, it was ALWAYS three max no matter the price or the item. That was what made Woot!, Woot!.

Stupid.

I thought they made vibrat-- uh, personal massagers?

Newegg has the samsung and Seagate 4TB externals for $119 and free shipping. This woot deal for me comes to $113 by the time you add sales tax and shipping.

Not apples to apples but they are not returbs either.

Limit one? Epic fail. If you’re not at least mirroring these you the data you put on them better be 100% disposable.

Edit:
lolz - I should read older comments first…

Desktop drives do not work with RAID controllers. I learned that while researching why my motherboard RAID was constantly failing, basically, if the drive goes into a deep data recover cycle, it takes too long to respond and gets dropped off of the array. Larger capacity drives are more likely to go into such a mode.

I wound up buying a small pile of NAS drives, designed for RAID setups.

Hitachi GST HDS5C4040ALE630 Technical Library

Depends on the controller. My NAS runs WD Green drives in a RAID just fine but the RAID controller in my old Dell machine would not allow me to use them.

My assumption would be the controller timeout is set higher on the NAS.

Yeah, but with Seagate, the person who buys new will be the one who experiences a failure so that the drive can then be sold as refurbished. The Samsung’s are a good deal, but I’ve had three Seagates fail on me in the past 6-7 years. Never again with them–I would think a hard drive should last a lifetime under normal use.

What is woot’s policy on returns for these drives anyway? My plan would be to buy one and run extensive diagnostics before adding it to my UNRaid array. If I didn’t like the results I would ask Woot for a replacment or refund. Or would they only accept a return on a drive that has physically failed?

I’m just not seeing the deal here. Sure, $105 for 4TB sounds good, but for a mere 10% savings (after shipping), a limit of one drive, and a very limiting 60 day warranty (I think new HGST drives are 3 years) I’d rather pickup 2+ new drives elsewhere.

Woot has always shied away from returns, and if you have a problem with this drive your best recourse will be with Hitachi. 60 days.

Hard drives do not last a lifetime by any stretch of the imagination. If you have one that has lasted years and years, you are either lucky or the HDD gets only light usage. You will always find divergent opinions when it comes to brand preference, but this is from my 10+ years of experience working on computers. When I diagnose a PC likely has a bad HDD, I typically find it to be a Hitachi or Samsung. Seagates and WD’s can fail too, but it just seems more common with Hitachi. Don’t even get me started on failure rates of refurb HDD’s. A couple of years ago when HDD factories got shut down due to flooding, we saw the prices skyrocket. I saw higher rates of returns of new Dells due to bad HDD’s. My conclusion: Dell was using refurb HDD’s in their new machines: a page out of eMachines’ book. Legally they can still call something new even if one or more of the parts inside is refurbed.

Seriously? We go through about one a month, that’s out of perhaps a hundred or so spinning in the server room.

I’m sure you know bad drives come in batches and a mirror on 2 drives from the same purchase is about as reliable as a single disk. A least that’s the case with new drives…

This is not to say that all Hitachi drives are rubbish. Years ago, before SATA came out, Hitachi made the fastest 2.5" hard drive on the market. It was one of their TravelStar models. I believe that model was only sold retail, meaning you would rarely or never find one in an OEM pc. Why? PC manufacturers get volume deals on hard drives, and they tend to go cheap. This is why you more frequently find Hitachi, Samsung, and Toshiba hard drives inside OEM machines.

If it’s platters shedding rust, you don’t. If it’s firmware, you flush it or maybe replace the whole board and call it job well done.

Would be nice with an option for 3,4, or 5 as stated above…

These would work well in a DROBO 5N with an SSD drive buffer in the special bay…

Gets you to 20TB physical space and around 15ish real space…

Not bad…If they perform…and do not become “refurbished” a second time…

But for the price worth a shot…

No no no. Maybe in your experience, which is of very little consequence compared to the volume storage companies buy. Take a look at this article:

“If the price were right, we would be buying nothing but Hitachi drives. They have been rock solid, and have had a remarkably low failure rate.”