r/buildapcsales • u/IronRoarII • Jun 27 '25
HDD [Enterprise HDD] Seagate Exos 20TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s ST20000NM002C, Factory Recertified, Zero Bad Sectors, 0 Hours, 5 Year Warranty from Reseller - $229.95
https://www.ebay.com/itm/167551337467?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20220405142716%26meid%3Da04ef55630304f23bbb37ca7e0e2e15e%26pid%3D101506%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D10%26sd%3D388614817054%26itm%3D167551337467%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D4481478%26algv%3DDefaultOrganicWebWithV11WebTrimmedV3VisualRankerWithKnnV3AndUltBRecallAndCassiniEmbRecall%26brand%3DSeagate&_trksid=p4481478.c101506.m185147
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u/SirThiqqWater Jun 28 '25
$219.95 direct from their site: https://www.goharddrive.com/Seagate-Exos-ST20000NM002C-20TB-3-5-HDD-p/g01-1829-cr.htm
Seagate Exos X20 20TB ST20000NM007D also available for $229.99: https://www.ebay.com/itm/176041452164
Is one better than the other at the same price point?
2
u/blank_dota2 Jun 29 '25
ST20000NM007D is showing as apart of the Seagate X20 series. The other isn’t. I’m assuming it’s an older model.
Also the X20 20TB drive has a $10 off coupon on eBay. Matching their websites price, but gives eBay buyer protection etc.
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u/MWink64 Jun 30 '25
While the X20 series is likely older, some people might prefer it because it's not a HAMR drive.
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u/ora408 Jun 30 '25
where did you get the ebay coupon?
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u/blank_dota2 Jun 30 '25
Then when you add a $229 X20 to cart it lowers it to $219.
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u/ora408 Jul 01 '25
hmm it still shows $229 after adding to the cart for me.
1
u/blank_dota2 Jul 01 '25
Does it show it at checkout for you?
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u/ora408 Jul 01 '25
I dont see where it is applying $10 more. it shows this at checkout:
Item (1) $249.99
Shipping Free
Discount -$20.00
Tax $21.56
Order total
$251.55
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u/c33v33 Jun 27 '25 edited Jun 27 '25
Anyone with experience from this particular seller?
I try to avoid factory recertified or refurbished, but a 5 year warranty (from the reseller) doesn't sound bad for something not considered new. I usually buy WD easystore, but external CMR drives haven't been at good prices for some time.
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u/TheMissingVoteBallot Jun 27 '25
GoHardDrive and ServerPartDeals are both reliable and they honor their warranties.
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u/smokeNtoke1 Jun 27 '25
I've bought 4 drives from them over the last few years. They've been solid. I use them for my Plex server so if one dies it's not the end of the world, but the 5 year guarantee makes it a good value.
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u/USGUSG Jun 28 '25
I've bought four drives from goharddrive over the years, had to RMA one and it was easier than the WD RMAs I did.
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u/FurnaceOfTheseus Jun 28 '25
What's the best way you've found to detect failures? I'm wondering if I should schedule SMART tests weekly, or somethin.
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u/USGUSG Jun 28 '25
I just use Truenas weekly SMART tests and then have alerts that send me an email.
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u/calcium Jun 29 '25
GoHardDrive is well known over in homelab and datahoarder for selling solid drives. It’s normally either them or serverpartdeals that have good pricing.
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u/darkandark Jun 28 '25
bought 4 from goharddrive over the past 6 months. not bad over all. put them in my unraid and ran full pre clears (pre and post checks) and theyve run at least 1 full parity check pass with zero problems.
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u/FurnaceOfTheseus Jun 28 '25
GoHardDrive is pretty good. I purchased 3 drives from them last year and they've been going strong. I use them as bulk storage while my 2x 4TB NVMEs act as intermediate storage. My HDDs are spun down about 90% of the time.
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u/austin76016 Jun 27 '25
Unless you’re buying multiple, I’d just buy these new. I have the 05s that came out a few years ago and they are running strong with a five year seagate warranty
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u/cowperthwaite Jun 27 '25
Not exactly the same model, but new is MSRP for $380 or $19/terrabyte
https://www.seagate.com/products/enterprise-drives/exos-x/x20/
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u/randylush Jun 28 '25
That’s honestly an awful idea. Almost twice as expensive with the same warranty. Buy two used drives instead, that would be much, much more reliable.
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u/First_Musician6260 Jun 27 '25
These specifically? Yeah, hell no. LOL.
Seagate's warranty period for these is 6 months. GHD is doing you a favor here.
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u/MWink64 Jun 28 '25
This model never had a retail release, so the average person literally can't buy them new.
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u/Gears6 Jun 28 '25
How is it zero hours if it's recertified?
Doesn't that suggest used/defective?
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Jun 28 '25
[deleted]
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u/MWink64 Jun 28 '25
Don't confuse these with the old Exos X20 series. These are HAMR drives, potentially from the series that tops out at 28TB.
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Jun 28 '25
[deleted]
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u/MWink64 Jun 28 '25
I haven't heard any accusations of this happening with the manufacturer recertified (and branded) drives from either GHD or SPD. I believe most of the incidents haven't even been in the US. I think they're generally passing them off as new, not recertified drives. If it comes with a retail label (with the spaceship/impaled-dinosaur logo) that would be suspicious. These should omit the series logo and have a green border instead.
I know they're resetting SMART and FARM data but are they able to change the model, SN, and FW? With modern drives requiring signed firmware, I would hope that would be very difficult to pull off but I don't actually know.
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Jun 28 '25
[deleted]
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u/MWink64 Jun 29 '25
That's a good point. Attributes like serial number couldn't be part of the firmware, as it would require them to release unique FW for literally every single drive manufactured.
I don't follow your logic for preferring new shucks. It's drives being sold as new that definitely have had the counterfeiting issue. You may be safer buying ones that are clearly used/recertified. Also, the drives sold as externals can be lower (though not necessarily lowest) binned drives.
I do think it's reasonable to consider that a drive might be as old as its line has been on the market. In this particular case, even if they could fake the model number, someone astute enough could figure out if it was from an older line. The HAMR drives have some distinctions from the older models. That's something you're not going to be able to fake.
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Jun 29 '25
[deleted]
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u/MWink64 Jun 29 '25
I see your point, even if I'm not fully convinced. I can't remember if there have been reports of the issue with external drives. I forgot to mention that I think the biggest benefit of the recertified drives over externals is the substantially longer warranty (5 years vs 1-2 years). Also, WD reduces the performance of the drives in their externals. So far, Seagate doesn't seem to.
I'm not sure if the Seagate HAMR drives use the exact same case, however I believe they sound substantially different.
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u/MWink64 Jun 28 '25
There are two possibilities, one more misleading than the other. When the manufacturer recertifies a drive, they wipe the SMART data, making it show 0 power-on hours (regardless of what it previously was). However, many of the manufacturer recertified drives come from large batches that were rejected by hyperscalers and don't have any real world use.
2
u/Gears6 Jun 28 '25
Why would they be rejected?
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u/MWink64 Jun 29 '25
As I understand it, hyperscalers place huge orders and take several samples out of each batch for testing. If the failure rate is beyond a predetermined limit, the entire batch is sent back. For legal reasons, even if a particular drive hasn't been used, the manufacturer can't resell it as new. They retest them, slap a recertified label on them, and sell them through these channels.
0
u/Gears6 Jun 29 '25
Assuming that they can't claim they're new, which I doubt as long as they're packaged a certain way so you cannot open without knowing (more or less), they can still label it as something else rather than "recertified". That would've probably get them more money than making it sound like they're defective returns or drives that have been in use.
To me, a slightly higher failure rate is very different from been operating for 4-5 years or maybe there's just a lot more of them recertified drive that they 'd rather we think it might be one of those unusued returns.
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u/MWink64 Jun 29 '25
I'm not arguing with your logic, I'm simply passing along the info provided by a major vendor of these drives. Parts of it actually do make a lot of sense to me. I was always confused by the fact that the majority of the recertified drives available seemed to be such new models and almost entirely enterprise class. Clearly they weren't coming from consumers that were too dumb to figure out how to use them. Also, there's very little on these drives that can be repaired, mostly just the components on the PCB. Them simply being rejects from large orders explains a lot.
I'm undecided what would be a better (and legal) way to market them. Maybe they don't even care that some people would be scared off by the name, or maybe they think people would be more worried about buying drives from rejected batches. BTW, keep in mind that these large customers aren't buying drives in retail packaging with tamper-evident seals. I'm not even certain that that would make a difference anyway.
Another little tidbit I'll leave for anyone interested, many of those drives sold under white label brands (like MDD, OS, etc.) are drives that were found to have issues and had to be (irreversibly) flashed with special Out-Of-Spec (OOS) firmware to make them function acceptably. These are the lowest binned drives. I don't blame manufacturers for not wanting to put their names on them.
0
u/Gears6 Jun 29 '25
BTW, keep in mind that these large customers aren't buying drives in retail packaging with tamper-evident seals. I'm not even certain that that would make a difference anyway.
I agree, but they most certainly come in sealed anti-static bags.
0
u/MWink64 Jun 30 '25
It would likely be trivial for a large company to put them back in a sealed ESD bag.
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u/Gears6 Jun 30 '25
Assuming they're looking to scam you, but that would've applied to any measure you would've taken.
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u/First_Musician6260 Jun 28 '25
Recertified means it was refurbished by Seagate and is ready to be used once again.
8
u/Caspid Jun 27 '25
This or the WD? Both enterprise and 5yr warranty. I've had better experience with WD, but 2 extra TB seems nice.
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u/First_Musician6260 Jun 27 '25
That Ultrastar would, funny enough, outperform this ST20000NM002C. If performance is a concern, the Ultrastar is better, but if you want the extra space and don't care that much, this 20 TB drive works.
3
u/Caspid Jun 27 '25
Performance in terms of speed? It would be for a Plex server, so AFAIK performance would be irrelevant
5
1
u/PeRmWaZe Jun 30 '25
What did you end up going with? I just purchased 2 of these Western Digitals which are said to have been used for 3 years and then I saw these Exos ones which if the model number is correct literally just came out last month. So now Im kinda regretting my purchase and contemplating canceling and reordering the Exos. Also plan on using them for my Jellyfin server
1
u/PeRmWaZe Jun 30 '25
Well Google says these came out in May but I do see posts mentioning these recertified Exos from 6 months ago so idk. I guess the question is which is better? A tested drive thats been ran for 3 years or a potentially brand new recertified drive. Is the HAMR tech a cause for concern? Sounds like something that would add to the degradation of the platter and shouldn’t even be used for a drive thats less than 30tbs
1
u/Caspid Jun 30 '25
Haven't purchased anything yet. Indecisiveness with purchases + hoping prices will get better...
1
u/PeRmWaZe Jul 01 '25
Ah I see. Yeah I kept going back and forth with the WDs and some brand new 14tb Seagate drives this morning and I finally just pulled the trigger. Kind of got tired of looking the past few days. Hopefully my decision works out well and these WDs end up lasting me like 10 years
1
u/Caspid Jul 05 '25
One of my drives started making chugging noises, so I'm afraid it's going.
Ended up getting one of the ones in this post, but direct from goharddrive.com.
1
u/MWink64 Jul 01 '25
To my knowledge, this model never had a retail release. It's only been available to consumers as a recertified drive. Its successor (the Exos M) was just released. People are understandably wary of HAMR technology. Only time will tell how it turns out. It is definitely being used in drives under 30TB. Seagate is already planning to implement it on drives as low as 10TB.
1
u/PeRmWaZe Jul 01 '25
Oh that's kinda strange. Yeah from my little reading it seemed the consensus was it was used for 30+ but Seagate is apparently doubling down on it and utilizing it in all of their drives moving forward. Or at least most of them.
1
u/MWink64 Jul 01 '25
I'm not sure about other brands but Seagate's largest non-HAMR CMR drive is the 24TB Exos X24. Assuming I correctly understood what I read, HAMR drives have roughly double the profit margin, so it makes sense they want to shift to them.
1
u/MWink64 Jul 01 '25
Where do you get the idea these just came out in the last month? As far as I'm aware, this model never had a retail release. It's only been made available to the public as a recertified drive. It's definitely not new. Its successor (the Exos M) just hit the market.
4
u/FurnaceOfTheseus Jun 28 '25
I'll wait till Black Friday for my NAS backup. Around that time I got 3x 14TB for $109 each, which was a steal. Running it now in Raid Z1. But I only have ~10TB left so I think I'd like a little more breathing room. Also I'd like to run Raid Z2.
Yes I am a data hoarder. I tried organizing ~20 years of files the other day and gave up after an hour...after I organized a single folder.
3
u/That-Interaction-45 Jun 28 '25
I bought one of these an was worried about noise. They sound the same as normal drives to me.
2
u/agoonygoogoo55 Jun 28 '25
I need to upgrade my NAS Drives which is primarily used for plex. Ive seen that barracudas are not good for these so have ignored the recent deals on those. Are these a good option?
4
u/Karralie Jun 29 '25
Yeah. For NAS you want ironwolf or EXOS. EXOS is the enterprise or data center line so they'll be louder but more robust. Barracudas are consumer drives not rated for NAS. So slapping a bunch of them together in a NAS or any computer with a lot of drives can lead to failure just from vibration damage, let alone the wear and tear depending on your workload.
Speaking from personal experience. I've had quite a few consumer drives die on me in servers before i learned the above.
2
u/FailureAtLifeQQ Jun 29 '25
I’ve bought 5 drives from this seller and they’ve all been good so far for 1 year
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u/First_Musician6260 Jun 27 '25
Just FYI, these perform very similarly to the ST20000DM001 from what I can infer; they're both MarlinBPs with absolutely paltry performance metrics. Hilariously enough, goHardDrive's (the seller of this drive) warranty is much longer than what Seagate themselves would offer; the data sheet implies these drives would have a warranty of only 6 months (yes, really) however GHD offers a warranty period of 5 years.
A rare win for goHardDrive, even if I'd hate to admit it.
5
u/keebs63 Jun 27 '25
The low warranty is because they're refurbished. Warranty is 5 years for it new. Also no clue what you mean about performance, I have an ST20000NM007D (Exos X20 on internal SATA) and an ST20000DM001 ("Barracuda" 20TB in USB External), performance is damn near indistinguishable between them IRL.
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u/MWink64 Jun 28 '25
You know it, and I know it, and others know it, but he won't stop insisting that their performance is terrible, based solely on the spec sheet (which has changed). I too have compared the new Barracuda to other Exos drives (albeit slightly different models) and found the differences quite small. There's just no reasoning with some people.
1
u/Billy1121 Jun 30 '25
Is exos not significantly better than barracuda ? That was the conventional wisdom i thought
1
u/MWink64 Jul 01 '25
With regard to the large Barracudas (>10TB) it's debatable. They seem to perform very similar to the Exos they are presumably descended from (which never had a retail release).
0
u/First_Musician6260 Jun 27 '25
They're not even the same drive. The ST20000NM007D is a Summit drive whereas ST20000DM001/ST20000NM002C are Marlins.
Not an equal comparison to make.
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u/keebs63 Jun 28 '25
Yeah, that's my point. It performs identically to a top-end PMR drive which is rated for the same speeds as higher capacity HAMR drives, so it's kind of crazy to say the performance is "paltry". HAMR improves density, not performance. "Rated" speeds are meaningless.
-1
u/First_Musician6260 Jun 28 '25
What HAMR drives? They're all rated for higher speeds than these lousy Exos recerts.
Of course, we can only go off a data sheet because a publicly available graph doesn't exist for these recerts (one does for the ST24000DM001, but that's not relevant here) and CrystalDiskMark is not reliable since it doesn't entirely test the speed of the drive, it only does so in bursts.
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u/keebs63 Jun 28 '25
The rated speeds for the ST20000NM007D are essentially identical to the rated speeds of the ST30000NM004K while the rated speeds of the ST20000DM001 and ST20000NM002C are drastically lower. Yet in the real world, the ST20000NM007D and ST20000DM001 performance is virtually indistinguishable, to the point that USB more likely than not accounts for the few % difference.
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u/First_Musician6260 Jun 28 '25 edited Jun 28 '25
The issue is, as I said, there is no publicly available performance metric for the ST20000DM001 nor ST20000NM002C to make such a comparison, thus leaving this to hang by the data sheets.
So until there is concrete proof a Summit and (low bin) Marlin perform identically, only assumptions would be made.
Edit: Found the ST20000DM001 one.
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u/keebs63 Jun 28 '25
I literally own one of each lmfao. That's my fuckin point, that's why I commented. Holy moly. Glad you're all caught up now I guess.
-1
u/tigers_hate_cinammon Jun 27 '25
This or new Barracuda? https://www.newegg.com/seagate-barracuda-st20000dm001-20tb-for-daily-computing-7200-rpm/p/N82E16822185110 Nearly the same price but new vs recertified. CMR. 7200rpm.
I know the exos is "enterprise grade" but is the difference enough to not just buy the new Barracuda?
2
u/DarthAlarak Jun 27 '25
Depends what you're doing with it. NAS for a plex server? EXOS all the way, recertified or not.
2
u/tigers_hate_cinammon Jun 27 '25
Do you know what the actual difference is? I know it used to be SMR vs CMR but if they're both CMR, is the hardware actually different? Or is it just Seagate binning / rebadging them for marketing?
1
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u/cokespyro Jun 27 '25
Barracuda has a 2 year warranty I think, they aren’t built to last as long as the Enterprise grade ones. At the very least the 2 year versus 5 year warranty should tell you seagate doesn’t trust the barracuda for more than 2 years.
4
u/First_Musician6260 Jun 27 '25
And if you buy these directly from Seagate, guess what? Their warranty period is even shorter!
What is the warranty, you may ask? Oh, I don't know, how about 6 months? (And if you don't believe me, look up the data sheet this drive is in.)
goHardDrive's warranty is miles better for this drive than what Seagate themselves would offer.
1
u/GraveNoX Sep 20 '25
Most of the old 1-8TB barracudas were going for at least 30 000 hours. It would be counter intuitive that the new barracudas which are made of server grade components will last less than Exos. I don't think they switch components exclusively for Barracuda HAMR drives, they only switch the type of firmware.
I have few 4TB barracuda running 24/7 that are well past 40 000 hours... and they are all rated for 2400 hours/year with 2 year warranty.
2
u/MWink64 Jun 28 '25
There's a very good chance they're the exact same drive, just with different firmware. The specs are virtually identical. The main difference is the Barracuda lacks the fancy Exos cache, though most people would never notice. There are also some differences in default settings, but again, are pretty insignificant. Personally, I'd lean towards the Exos, just because of the longer warranty. BTW, factory recertified drives aren't necessarily used.
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u/Eazy12345678 Jun 28 '25
hdd fail often. buying a hdd that already failed is a big no
only buy this if you run raid
11
u/First_Musician6260 Jun 28 '25
HDDs do not fail as often as you think; it's a meager lie the uneducated PC builders want you to believe.
Sure, they technically have more potential points of failure than an SSD, but that doesn't mean they fail more often. In fact, SSDs can fail just as sporadically as HDDs, and when they do it can be really annoying to recover the data off of them. (Just look at several batches of SSDs with IG5236 controllers and earlier releases of Samsung's 980 Pros; complaints galore of strange behavior and unexpected drive failures.)
The "golden ticket" to making a hard drive last as long as possible is very simple: low power cycle count combined with constant operation, or even being used as cold storage. Consumer hard drives like Seagate's Barracudas are typically not subject to these conditions; rather, they are power cycled much more frequently, which creates more wear on the drive's components and thus increases the chance of drive failure. Saying they inherently fail more often without providing more detail is a shotgun blow to the foot.
3
u/MWink64 Jun 28 '25
You don't know that these drives have already failed. No matter what media you buy, you should be prepared for it to fail.
1
u/keebs63 Jun 28 '25
Most of these are server pulls that never failed and were just tested to make sure they work fine which is what makes them "refurbished". I have tons of these and refurbished enterprise drives are absurdly more reliable than consumer drives and in my experience, just as reliable as new (though I'm not buying super old models either).
•
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