Why are the 20tb cheaper than the 18TB on this page?
The 20TB drive ($289.99) reads “Refurbished”. The 18TB ($298.77) drive makes no mention.
That page also lists an identical looking 20TB drive for $379.99 which is still ~$60 less than what it would cost, new, elsewhere.
Perhaps the pricier versions (the ones that do not state “refurbished”) have a longer warranty?
It would be interesting to know how Water Panther is sourcing these drives, and what determines which ones sell for which price, and if the warranties differ.
Water panther has a reddit account, and owns tech on tech Amazon store. All the same person
They buy factory recertified drives and resell. The factory wipes smart data. Those drives are not 0 hour drives.
I’ve never used these drives so I don’t know any more than this
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I’m sure there is some software to wipe the power on data off the hard disk.
“New” from an eBay seller might not be the same “new” from an authorized retailer, such as Best Buy, B&H Photo Video, Micro Center, etc.
If you need to submit a warranty claim, you will have to provide a sale’s receipt. If Seagate accepts an eBay seller as an authorized agent, then you will be in good shape. But anyone can create an eBay account and describe their item as “New”.
It might all work out. But with established businesses (as I listed, above), you will not have to worry about DOA drives, or warranty issues. I am not sure that that would be the case from an eBay seller.
Good point. I always wonder when a seller says, “Two year warranty” or even one year warranty. Will they actually exist even forward that period of time? Established businesses have a much better chance (thou not zero) of staying in business.
A reputable seller will accept returns within 1 or 2 weeks (perhaps 30 days). That is up to each seller.
Beyond that, you have to deal with the manufacturer for warranty related issues.
With Water Panther, however, the warranty is not through the manufacturer. It is through “Tech on Tech”.
I believe that eBay is very supportive, on the side of the buyers (almost to a fault). So a DOA drive would probably not be an issue. But still, I would rather deal with Best Buy, etc, over an eBay seller.
I once purchased several drives from B&H. Two of the drives had strong vibrations. That was a red flag for me, especially since the other drives (same models) from the same purchase did not vibrate anywhere near that amount.
B&H took the two questionable drives back with no hassle, and issued me a refund a few days after they received my return.
I would not want to test that scenario with an eBay seller.
I’ve learned, the hard way, that even a vendor’s own “30 day return” has caveats. I bought a bunch of drives a while ago from an EBay seller. Right away, one had a physically noticeable problem. I returned it, no issue. Next, and still within the vendor’s supposed “30 day” return period, a drive made terrible noises. But I didn’t notice until I fired it up a couple weeks after returning the 1st drive. Tried to return it, no response what-so-ever from the vendor! And this is a big store, with thousands of sales, not Joe Seller down the street.
Turns out, an EBay vendor pretty much must take anything back within 30 days, as a one time occurance. After that, it doesn’t have to at all, even when they should. Fortunately EBay stepped in a refunded me after “researching” the transaction details, with multiple attempted contacts.
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I am sure there is
But when I say “They buy factory recertified drives and resell. The factory wipes smart data. Those drives are not 0 hour drives.”
I mean “They buy factory recertified drives and resell. The factory wipes smart data. Those drives are not 0 hour drives.”
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I had two drives suddenly get very slow, and then fail on the same day. Both would spin up, show up in Windows Disk Manager as uninitialized, with no partitions, but Disk Manager would not initialize them.
I tried on two different computers, with the same results.
I also tried with MiniTool’s Partition Wizard, to no avail. It reported “Bad Drive”.
I called the seller. They immediately answered the phone. They asked me for my order number, and serial numbers.
They e-mailed me a pre-paid, UPS, 2-day shipping label.
On the day that they took the UPS delivery, they shipped me my replacement drives – also UPS 2-day.
This was the smoothest, simplest, and professional and fast warranty transaction I have ever had.
The only down-side is that they do not offer data recovery. The drives were fully plotted. Whatever failed was probably a simple fix, if you are in that business. Kind of frustrating that my plots were probably easily recoverable. Oh well.
These were refurbished drives. Considering the low price (compared to new drives), and the 2 year warranty (which now I know is honored and a breeze to work with), I have no qualms with recommending them.
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I’ve had good luck with WaterPanther before, they seem to be a legit company that offers good deals. Sometimes you’ll see Waterpanther drives advertised on Amazon or Newegg, but you might get a cheaper price for the identical item directly from them. And once you get the drive and find out what it actually is, it’s always cheaper that the price you would have paid if the actual manufacturer had been advertised.
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I met a post about water panthers.
I bought their drives about a year ago for a backup array. They sell relabeled OEM enterprise HDDs. I ordered 16TB disks and they were clearly 16TB Seagate EXOS disks with a new label.
I had to return them because they were incompatible with my RAID controller (MegaRAID 9361-4i). The company altered the firmware to remove all the SMART data from the disks, and all the disks had a serial number of “0000000000”. Since my RAID controller would identify disks by their serial numbers, and all the drives had the same serial number, it thought I had only one disk connected and there was no workaround.
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I also ordered from:
(the above is filtered for 16 TB re-certified)
As far as I can tell, it is the same company as WaterPanther.
They did reset the SMART data (based on the run time of the drives).
But they did not erase the serial numbers.
Their prices are also a bit lower than their listings on Amazon (presumably due to no fee).
Their prices change often, as does their inventory. They will often have similar Exos models that differ slightly by part number.
They also sell new drives. I did not compare their “new” prices with competitors.
The above should be compatible with your RAID controller, and at a marginally lower price point for the same drives.
Those guys want to charge me tax and shipping, I should just make a day trip with cash!!!
I ordered from them 3 or 4 times, and the shipping was free and there was no tax.
So either this is something new, or it is because you are both in Florida.
If it is the latter, then it might be worth asking a friend / family member, etc, from out-of-state, to the drives for you. That should save you on the tax. If it is a large order, the savings might be worth it.
Or I might be completely off base, because I do not understand why Florida would charge tax for their own residents, but not for folks out-of-state?
I be in South FL!!!
I’ll stay off the roads.
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… … … …!!!
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165 for a 16TB
Buy five.
Buy a five unit USB 3.0 enclosure for $100 on ebay.
About 950 USD it is a 80TB unit. And quite neat.
Not bad. No?