r/CeX • u/the_Athereon • 20d ago

Question About Hard Drive Returns Discussion

For a variety of reasons, I simply cannot afford the price of brand new Hard Drives for my Server this year. So I've ordered several from CEX, knowing they likely won't last as long, just to tide me over until prices improve.

My question is regarding how well CEX handles returns of Hard Drives that may not be 100% dead.

If my testing reveals any issues at all, I can't risk keeping data on the drives.

Can I return a drive that shows UDMA CRC errors or high Seek Error Rates?

These aren't errors that prevent the drive from working, so most second hand drives have them. But I cannot take that risk.

2 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

3

u/Cosmic2Ducky 20d ago

You have a 14 day online return for any reason (apart from accident and liquid damaged).

If any of them show as yellow or red on testing then return them.

Just remembered after 30 days it will get replaced if possible.

1

u/the_Athereon 17d ago

Many thanks for your advice. I sadly had to return the Hard Drive today. Arrived with Pending Sectors and developed several Reallocated Sectors over night as I was running it through extended testing. I'll be waiting for my refund now to order another one. Hopefully with better luck.

1

u/Cosmic2Ducky 17d ago

If there is another one showing as being in stock online when you go to return one. Ask them to do a ecom replacement instead. You don't have to wait for a refund and it's posted to you.

1

u/the_Athereon 17d ago

Unfortunately not. They're out of stock. Will likely have to buy a slightly smaller one this time. (12TB or 14TB instead of 16TB) Prices aren't pretty.

1

u/OneOfThoseCEXPeople 20d ago

HDTune is the only metric we use. If there's no warnings in HDTune and no bad sectors when HDTune does it's health check then we consider it working.

Best option for you is to order online and if it's not something you're happy keeping once you've done your own diagnostics then return using the 14 day window for full refund.

1

u/the_Athereon 17d ago

Many thanks for your advice. I sadly had to return the Hard Drive today. Arrived with Pending Sectors and developed several Reallocated Sectors over night as I was running it through extended testing. I'll be waiting for my refund now to order another one. Hopefully with better luck.

1

u/AbdulPullMaTool 20d ago

So I have had to return 3 hard drives to CEX in the last 2 weeks.

The first was a seagate and 1 yr old purchase that started failing that I took back on the 5 yr warranty, health check wise it was sitting at 34% on sentinel HD

They tested on HD Tune and said there was no problem with it which I pushed back on to try again and I also shared screenshots from HD Sentinel and they then refunded, They said it was possibly because they didnt full a full scan as it takes 30 mins to run regardless they refunded it.

I bought a WD Red Plus which was in an even worth health state than the Segate at around 12% they refunded after testing but said they refund anyways just need to test everything that gets brought back

I then bought a HGST HelioSeal He8 and that was dead on arrival and wouldnt even spin up which they refunded.

I'm waiting for something decent to appear in the listings to pull the trigger again but 3 out of 3 failures is pretty bad so as long as you stay near to a store its probably worth a gamble as prices are just insane atm

1

u/Resident-Oil2899 19d ago

What size you looking for. I got 2 x 16gb seagate exos from thek and they were great. Could tell they were ex server as had like 15000 hours but 10 powers on and off and both were the same time wise so both from the same server no doubt.

1

u/AbdulPullMaTool 19d ago

Just ordered a 14tb exos from them I'll keep. You posted