# Refurbished Hard Drives with 0 Power On Hours



## shovenose (Aug 30, 2019)

I bought a bunch of refurb hard drives recently. All of them had 0 hours on them, but that's obviously impossible because a. they are refurbished, not new and b. two of them had partitions on them already. I've read reviews of other buyers saying the same things (signs of use, but 0 hours). Basically, it seems they reset the SMART data. I'm curious if there is any way I can get the true SMART data from the drive and "correct" the power on hours. I don't care if they have a milllion hours, I just want it to be accurate. Thanks.


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## yotano211 (Aug 30, 2019)

I know this sounds weird, but I have had more luck with refurb HDs than new drives. if its refurbished correctly by the HD company they can be quite good drives.


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## bonehead123 (Aug 30, 2019)

short answer:  nO

Are these spinners ?  Because _*IF*_ they were actually refurbed by the OEM, they were most likely securely wiped multiple times and the smart data erased and reset, for which they would have the proper tools to do so.  But then if this was true, there should be NO partitions on them either.... but I doubt if they kept the smart data on file anywhere too, so getting it would probably be a strong NO also....

However, if you got them from some other source, you should go back to them for a complete, detailed explanation, or a refund/replacement....

that's what I would do, like, yesterday.  

But I am not in the habit of buying refurbed HDD's either


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## shovenose (Aug 30, 2019)

bonehead123 said:


> short answer:  nO
> 
> Are these spinners ?  Because _*IF*_ they were actually refurbed by the OEM, they were most likely securely wiped multiple times and the smart data erased and reset, for which they would have the proper tools to do so.  But then if this was true, there should be NO partitions on them either.... but I doubt if they kept the smart data on file anywhere too, so getting it would probably be a strong NO also....
> 
> ...



At least one of the refurb drives came from goharddrive which has a good reputation. I'm not worried about it. I just want to know the true power on hours.


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## newtekie1 (Aug 30, 2019)

shovenose said:


> At least one of the refurb drives came from goharddrive which has a good reputation. I'm not worried about it. I just want to know the true power on hours.



Not possible.  They smart data is stored in flash memory.  So once it's flashed back to 0, there is no way an end user is going to recover the old data that was wiped from the flash memory.


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## Kissamies (Aug 30, 2019)

Cleaned EEPROM?


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 30, 2019)

shovenose said:


> I bought a bunch of refurb hard drives recently. All of them had 0 hours on them, but that's obviously impossible because a. they are refurbished, not new and b. two of them had partitions on them already. I've read reviews of other buyers saying the same things (signs of use, but 0 hours). Basically, it seems they reset the SMART data. I'm curious if there is any way I can get the true SMART data from the drive and "correct" the power on hours. I don't care if they have a milllion hours, I just want it to be accurate. Thanks.



Aircraft engines sometimes when rebuilt are zeroed out, so shouldnt be a big deal


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## jaggerwild (Aug 30, 2019)

They replace or updated the main board, its not rocket science.


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## Jetster (Aug 30, 2019)

Refurb can have 0 hours, Ive seen it many times. Don't think they would even bother to change the data. Probably a problem with the PCB

Manufacture's don't do shit to returned drives, but get them working. So there not going to secure erase, or anything else. Just get it working


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## rtwjunkie (Aug 30, 2019)

yotano211 said:


> I know this sounds weird, but I have had more luck with refurb HDs than new drives. if its refurbished correctly by the HD company they can be quite good drives.


OP: I’ve also had zero problems with refurbished hdd’s.  They usually get better quality control on the way out than the new drives.  For them to all be reading as if new doesn’t concern me. 

Besides, you really don’t have any kind of reference to watch a drive for problems if it had 250,000 hours used and many other categories are in warning because of “no life left.”  If done right, it’s nearly new, and that’s how you should view it.


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## shovenose (Aug 30, 2019)

Thanks folks. I won't worry about it


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## cornemuse (Aug 31, 2019)

I bought 10 WD 80 gig 2½" drives, supposedly from Dell laptops that were not ever sold. (printed on WD label as Dell). As being installed & having os installed, they were 'used'. They were wiped/formatted/whatever, & sold as used. Cost me $5.45 each, (plus tax & shipping). I have used about 5 or 6 of 'em. I install all sorts of os's on 'em, ubuntu/mint/etc, flavors. What I like I clone to maybe 500 g hdds (I use a kingwin power dock) then use partition wizard free to 'claim' the whole 500 g's. They have never let me down, so far.

Did the same with 6 120 gig hdds- Toshiba/fujitsu/WD about $7.00 each, all still good.

With the power dock, cloning 80 g takes ± 1/6 th the time as 500 g, then reclaim the 420 ± gigs with whatever OS.

-corne-


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## shovenose (Sep 4, 2019)

Well, one of the refurb drives already has pending sectors. It's going back for a refund. The rest are fine so far.


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## timta2 (Sep 4, 2019)

shovenose said:


> At least one of the refurb drives came from goharddrive which has a good reputation. I'm not worried about it. I just want to know the true power on hours.



They've been selling server pulls and refurbs with reset S.M.A.R.T. data for years and while the drives have a questionable reputation, just by the nature of what they are using and how they are doing it, their customer service is ok, from what I've heard. You can do some searching over at Slickdeals with "goharddrive" as your query and see lots of posts about them. I would make sure that you backup any data you care about that is stored on these drives! There's no telling how many tens of thousands of hours they've been running for and what kinds of problems they've had in the past.


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## shovenose (Sep 4, 2019)

timta2 said:


> They've been selling server pulls and refurbs with reset S.M.A.R.T. data for years and while the drives have a questionable reputation, just by the nature of what they are using and how they are doing it, their customer service is ok, from what I've heard. You can do some searching over at Slickdeals with "goharddrive" as your query and see lots of posts about them. I would make sure that you backup any data you care about that is stored on these drives! There's no telling how many tens of thousands of hours they've been running for and what kinds of problems they've had in the past.



I'm using all these drives in an Unraid server with double parity so it should be ok.


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## taz420nj (Sep 6, 2019)

Goharddrive (and all their puppet accounts like apethouse) are not refurbishers, they are recyclers.  Their refurbishing process consists of taking it off a pallet of server pulls, zeroing it out, clearing the SMART data, slapping their sticker on it, and throwing it in a static bag.  I got burned by them years back, and I highly doubt they've changed their ways.


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## shovenose (Sep 16, 2019)

taz420nj said:


> Goharddrive (and all their puppet accounts like apethouse) are not refurbishers, they are recyclers.  Their refurbishing process consists of taking it off a pallet of server pulls, zeroing it out, clearing the SMART data, slapping their sticker on it, and throwing it in a static bag.  I got burned by them years back, and I highly doubt they've changed their ways.



Yeah, I returned the WD that started growing pending sectors a week ago. Now another drive (from another mass "refurbisher" on eBay) is coming up with SMART errors. Ugh.


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## killster1 (Sep 16, 2019)

Of course they wiped the smart data  

depends how much your time is worth, ever had a drive fail when rebuilding the array from a failed drive? ya not fun. I just go with 8 or 10tb reds pulled from externals, used to get hgst but im not sure who owns or makes them now ;( have about 30x8tb reds going and still adding more to the mix, 0 have failed so far.


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## shovenose (Sep 16, 2019)

killster1 said:


> Of course they wiped the smart data
> 
> depends how much your time is worth, ever had a drive fail when rebuilding the array from a failed drive? ya not fun. I just go with 8 or 10tb reds pulled from externals, used to get hgst but im not sure who owns or makes them now ;( have about 30x8tb reds going and still adding more to the mix, 0 have failed so far.


Yeah, I have 6 8tb drives shucked from wd externals. I should have just got more of those instead of the crappy used drives lol


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## The Egg (Sep 16, 2019)

yotano211 said:


> I know this sounds weird, but I have had more luck with refurb HDs than new drives. if its refurbished correctly by the HD company they can be quite good drives.





rtwjunkie said:


> OP: I’ve also had zero problems with refurbished hdd’s.  They usually get better quality control on the way out than the new drives.  For them to all be reading as if new doesn’t concern me.


You can add another "generally had pretty good luck with refurb drives" vote.  Rtwjunkie could be onto something in that they may receive a bit more testing/validation.  Of course I'm talking _manufacturer_ refurb'ed drives.  Whatever service the OP used sounds like something different altogether.


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## Jetster (Jul 6, 2020)

NVM Necro thread


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