The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/Ms4sman on 2025-02-17 14:03:01.
I am trying to figure out if I'm crazy or what. I have had 5 out of 6 drives from GoHardDrive accrue dozens if not hundreds of SMART errors within days of receiving them and I don't understand if I just have awful luck or if I'm somehow doing something wrong.
TL;DR: I ordered two drives from GHD. Both had dozens of bad sectors and other SMART errors within days. GHD paid for a return label and sent me two more. Both of these had the same issue. GHD told me they were out of that model and offered a refund which I accepted. I then ordered two of a different model from them to try, and one of those has now also had the same issue, and I'm hesitant to trust the last one either at this point.
For background, I'm working with an unRAID server which I have had for several years now and which already has 4 WD Red drives in it, a 4 TB and 3 3 TB ones. The 4 TB is the parity drive and the 3 TBs are the array drives. None of these has ever had any SMART errors at all and the oldest are over 7 years old.
I wanted to upgrade my array since some drives were getting old and all were pretty small, so I ordered 2x Seagate Enterprise Capacity ST12000NM0127 12TB drives from GoHardDrive. This was the first time I'd ordered from them. They arrived well packaged and all that and I put them into my server and started running extended SMART tests and pre-clearing them both. By the time they had finished, both of them had a handful of SMART errors including reallocated sectors, pending sectors, and offline uncorrectable sectors. I know these are manufacturer recertified drives, but my understanding is that if they are recertified they are SUPPOSED to be error free...
I contacted GHD and they were very helpful and immediately sent me a pre-paid return label for RMA and as soon as they were returned sent me two replacements. I figured I must have just had terrible luck and started running SMART tests and pre-clearing the new drives. They both passed extended SMART tests, but then during pre-clearing one of them quickly racked up 1448 reallocated sectors. The other initially seemed OK. I contacted CS again and again they sent me a label to return the drive. However, this time they could not replace it as they said they were out of stock on that particular model. I opted to instead return it for a refund and try a different model and ordered a Seagate IronWolf ST12000VN0007 12TB while I waited for the bad one to be delivered back.
About the time I received this new drive and started checking it out, the OTHER of the original 2 replacements suddenly started having issues. Until that point, it HAD been fine and I'd been successfully using it as a parity drive. It quickly racked up over a thousand reallocated sectors as well. Meanwhile the new drive seemed to be doing OK.
I contacted CS AGAIN, now feeling that they must hate me, and they again sent me a return label and I chose to get another refund. Since the Ironwolf drive seemed to be doing well, I ordered a second one of those. That second replacement arrived a few days ago, and in the process of pre-clearing it, yet again, it racked up dozens of reallocated sectors, pending sectors, and offline uncorrectable sectors. As of today, the first Ironwolf still seems ok, but I'm hesitant to trust it either at this point.
Am I doing something wrong here? I really hope I'm not somehow taking advantage of their CS department. But I can't see how I'd be causing this. All I can think of that might cause this from my end would be maybe a bad power supply in my server or a bad SATA controller on my motherboard. But I don't think it could be either of those because all this time, my original four WD Red drives has been perfectly fine. If there was a power issue or SATA controller issue, you'd think my other drives would be having issues right? Am I missing something totally obvious? What should I do at this point?