white label drives?

Assuming the pictures that are with the product are correct on the PCB I see SEAGATE on the left edge.

61DezoNeTkL._SL1000_.jpg
 
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I bought a white label drive once. It lasted about 3 months before it died. You have been warned.
 
cyclone3d said:
I bought a white label drive once. It lasted about 3 months before it died. You have been warned.
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It all depends on where you buy it from, why it is a white label and if you check the drive when you get it.

FYI: It is a good practice to "burn in" ALL hard drives you get to check for defects.

GoHardDrive orders large quantities of drives from manufactures as an OEM. The majority of their drives have the firmware altered by changing the model number by 1 digit. Other than that they are completely stock.

I have several white label drives from them including cheap 80GB boot drives and 2TB-4TB drives. Some of the 2TB drives actually show that they are Hitachi drives. The Hitachi tools even detect them as legitimate Hitachi drives.

There are LOTS of good things in that thread I linked, including someone using them in a fairly large setup.

From my experience white label drives from GoHardDrive have the exact same likelihood to show up broken as any other drive and last just as long as their "legitimate cousins". The same can't be said about all sellers but GoHardDrive is legit.

They have excellent customer service BTW. The one time I had drives show up faulty they were replaced within 3 business days and they paid the shipping. No questions asked, no hassle. Honestly, it was the best customer service I have ever gotten involving an RMA. Hell, even newegg & TigerDirect made me pay for the shipping last time I had an issue.
 
I can second ordering from GoHardDrive. I ordered from them on eBay, had one drive with SMART errors and they replaced it. Replacement drive had a firmware that said "Don't ship", asked about a cross ship replacement and they got me the same model as the other one I had (which is detected as a Hitachi drive). Definitely will order from them when its time to expand my 2TB RAID1 array to a 4TB RAID10 array.
 
If these are really Seagate drives (as shown in the picture) the savings is $3 US for a reduction of 1 year of warranty. If they are hgst that would be a decent deal though.
 
runt said:
I can second ordering from GoHardDrive. I ordered from them on eBay, had one drive with SMART errors and they replaced it. Replacement drive had a firmware that said "Don't ship", asked about a cross ship replacement and they got me the same model as the other one I had (which is detected as a Hitachi drive). Definitely will order from them when its time to expand my 2TB RAID1 array to a 4TB RAID10 array.
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what do you mean the firmware said "don't ship"?
 
nekrosoft13 said:
what do you mean the firmware said "don't ship"?
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The firmware text string actually said "don't ship". Not sure how it got through QA, but no one at ServerTheHome or GoHardDrive had ever seen it. They replaced it and I'm happy with the result.
 
I've gotten several 4TB drives from GoHardDrive and as far as I can tell, they're pretty much identical to the latest model WD RE drives. I had one failure, but they replaced it without any issues and they've been going great since.
 
It just means you don't know what you're buying, they'll sell you whatever they have available.

Not worth it in my opinion unless they're half the price of the cheapest drive and you're running a RAIDZ3 with backups.
 
I just got a 4TB WL drive and the Firmware Revision - DONTSHIP

No idea what this means but it makes me feel uneasy. I did a long format on it right out the anti static bag and there were no problems detected by HD Sentinel. Think I'll run scandisk on it. Need to ferret out any gremlins in the beginning.
 
runt said:
I can second ordering from GoHardDrive. I ordered from them on eBay, had one drive with SMART errors and they replaced it. Replacement drive had a firmware that said "Don't ship", asked about a cross ship replacement and they got me the same model as the other one I had (which is detected as a Hitachi drive). Definitely will order from them when its time to expand my 2TB RAID1 array to a 4TB RAID10 array.
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You got two bad HDDs in a row and you would use them again? :p
 
Deadjasper said:
This one showed up unexpectantly with a $0.00 invoice so paying for it is optional. :D
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Sorry, thought the last post was aimed at me. I did in fact get to bad HD's in a row and sent them both back. Money has already been refunded so I'm in the clear.
 
Deadjasper said:
I just got a 4TB WL drive and the Firmware Revision - DONTSHIP

No idea what this means but it makes me feel uneasy. I did a long format on it right out the anti static bag and there were no problems detected by HD Sentinel. Think I'll run scandisk on it. Need to ferret out any gremlins in the beginning.
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send it back, its a rejected drive from production line
 
Ran a surface scan using HD Sentinel Pro and it came back good. Drive is 100% healthy. Think I'm gonna keep it.
 
white label doesn't make drives, they are usually either used, rejected due to quality issue or refurbished drives from WD, HGST (Hitachi) or seagate.

One of the original manufactured placed "DONTSHIP" there for a reason, but its your data, your risk.
 
nekrosoft13 said:
white label doesn't make drives, they are usually either used, rejected due to quality issue or refurbished drives from WD, HGST (Hitachi) or seagate.

One of the original manufactured placed "DONTSHIP" there for a reason, but its your data, your risk.
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If this is true, the seller should never have sold it.
 
Deadjasper said:
If this is true, the seller should never have sold it.
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This is why they are white label drives and not retail or OEM drives. The drives are failed drives which are repaired or re-certified by a third party after being manufactured.
 
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Deadjasper said:
If this is true, the seller should never have sold it.
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well dealers can still sell you salvage cars, cars that ween in major accident, or lemon cars, its partly buyers responsibility to do their research.

if you care about your data, drive that original manufactured labeled as "DONTSHIP" is a drive that failed quality check, do you really want to place your data on it?
 
Unfortunately "DONTSHIP" wasn't anywhere to be seen before I ordered this drive and I suspect that no amount of research would have uncovered this bit of info. I found this thread AFTER finding it via HD Sentinel. Since it passed said programs extensive scan for defects I'll keep it for now. The price was such that it's worth taking a chance. ;)
 
keep in mind that white label drive company doesn't even want those drives out. If you contact them, they will apologize and send you a new one.
 
They will also cross ship a replacement for a drive with a DONTSHIP firmware. All in all, I have had better luck with white label drives than I have with name brand drives.
 
Largo said:
I read the whole thread, that is an amazing bit of information. Enterprise drives at the consumer drive price. Very interested in that when I get around to upgrading my raid 5 to 4tb disks!
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some happy and some not :D

do your own risk!

mine: I always get NON refurbished HD regardless of enterprise or not.
 
This looks like one of those where houses that buy bulk inventory from where houses that want to dump stuff. They are all over the place in silicon valley area, even JDR micro outlet store does it. They usually have some good deals but only for hackers. The good stuff they sell for more than new. So many companies go out of business each month and these guys sweep in and buy it cheap. It costs a lot to junk the old stuff to get the place ready for the new renters of the place so any price is accepted. If it were not for places such as these, I would never have learnt all the things I did. Although the factory rejected stuff, they do not do extensive testing, they will junk the stuff if they find any problems, usually these are minor problems but you have to be a little tech to fix them. I have also found a lot of prototypes from before production or modified due to some error in final prodction so have extra wires and such which did not get fixed for the first batch.

I once bought like 50 maxtor drives and got 40 of them working by swapping parts. Not really worth the hassle if I was a real user.. Although I would not use such things in a production environment. There is a warranty but you dont know why it was originally junked. Might be nothing.. These guys barely test the stuff.. It is not worth it to them. Since they will exchange it, they expect you to test them. I seen inventory sitting at their desks fr many months for testing but they never get to it and then they slap it 50% off and just sell it. Tells me it would cost them more to do it. I had no idea they went on line but it is not surprising.
 
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I have 3x WL HGST 2TBs from GoHD. They came with recent build dates, good firmware versions & clean SMART. That said, they're only a couple months old.

At $60 each thru Amazon, I'm satisfied. Very.
 
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