Keen for any thoughts - I got a previously unused 8TB Seagate Skyhawk drive 2nd hand on eBay
It was posted in a basic brown jiffy bag and landed in through the postbox onto a tiled floor.
Initial drive inspection looks ok, SMART read shows no major error but running an extended test via Seagate tools at present
Assuming longer test is ok, question is would you be happy with the drive or am I just storing up problems for later on? Should I return it?
I do not think that that matters.
As I understand it, when the drives are powered off, the actuator arm, heads, platters, all get locked into place. If the manufacturers did not design them that way, then countless drives would be delivered dead.
Yes, many drives are dead on arrival. Those are probably due to manufacturing defects, which quality control should have caught. Or, people claim DOA, when they dropped the drive while it was powered on, or had a static discharge when handling it, etc.
I have a Seagate external drive, where it got banged around in shipping, so much, that I could not connect the cables (the drive moved in the case, concealing the power port and the USB port).
I thought about returning the drive. But then I figured that the drive is probably fine. So I banged it on the floor several times, to force the ports to their proper position within the outer casing.
I have been using that drive for nearly a year. Being powered off, during that issue, protected the drive.
Good to know - Iām probably biased by a few instances of drive death within a few weeks of poor packaging!
I bought a used EBay external WD drive that arrived via USPS in a big box that was 10x the drive size. And the drive was not even wrapped AT ALL!! More surprising, it has worked perfectly, probably for a year now farming Chia. Go figure!
You just never know.
I bought some from an amazon seller who did the same, from the states to the uk, some had dinted metal cases, 1 died shortly after, getting corrupted data, the rest are all still fine after a yr ish
Sounds like there is some right idiots packaging up these drives, mine when sold are extremely well wrapped, better than when I received them.