Oh, yeah, right... take the least reliable model Seagate has ever made, the 7200.11, then find some that have actually FAILED in service, now brush their teeth and comb their hair and resell them so that a new crop of people will trust them with THEIR data.
The biggest PLUS to this is that you might be able to use a recovery program to get the past owner's personal data off the drive before it fails.
It's amazing that neither these nor the 40gb slim ATA maxtor drives can even come close to eclipsing what happened with the 75gxp series of Deskstars, yet I believe that more of the other drives have been manufactured and sold than those IBM drives lol.
adam694
Member
posted: Aug. 29, 2009 @ 7:39p
I have worked in the HDD industry for a lot of years, and the short answer is that NO, they do not place any real limits on how long it has been used or start/stops. There is a limit on reallocation (but its high - its built into the drive's self test).
Bottom line, if it powers up and passes self test (POST), it is good to go out as a replacement.
In general, "refurbishment" consists of two steps (1) test the drive to see if it POSTs. (a huge proportion of drives returned as defective are actually "no defect found" (NDF)either because the usrs real problem was something else or because the drive has a real problem that only shows up intermittently. If it POSTS, it goes out as a replacement. If it doesn't POST, they may attempt a minor repair (usually just a card swap - i.e. take a good card from an HDD with failing mechanicals and put it on a drive with good mechanicals but a failed card). If it then pasts POST, it is good to go. In either case, they just send it out to the unsuspecting public.
Sad thing is that if you (as an end user) buy a brand new drive and it fails right out of the box, the chances are really high that you will receive as a warranty replacement a drive that has been used, failed, and put through the above process.
Disclaimer: By providing links to other sites, FatWallet.com does not guarantee, approve or endorse the information or products available at these sites, nor does a link indicate any association with or endorsement by the linked site to FatWallet.com.
Members of our community may attach files to a post in accordance with the User Agreement. FatWallet is not responsible for the content, accuracy, completeness or validity of any information contained in any attached file. Files have *not* been scanned for viruses. Be especially wary of Excel files which may contain malicious content.
Click to copy code and go to .