Drive I bought was a returned/used drive, run a file recovery program on it? ;)

Emig5m

Weaksauce
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Dec 6, 2005
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I picked up a 6TB drive from Staples last night and didn't notice that the seal had been broken until this morning and that it was a returned/used drive. I ran Crystal Disk Info on it and it said that the drive has been powered on 29 times and used for 65 hours. That seems like a lot of use to be paying full brand new retail price? Shouldn't it have been sold as a open box? I could see not making too much fuss over a few power cycles and a few hours of use where someone might not of been able to get it working or whatever but 65hrs....? Then I thought, in 65 hours of use what interesting stuff might be hidden/left on this drive so I'm currently letting Recuva do a deep scan which says an estimated 9 hours remaining. In just a few minutes it's already found 53 files, lol. I wonder if anything of interest could be left on this drive or is time of the essence and should I just go return it and get it over with (I wanted a larger drive anyway and Best Buy has a 12TB in stock).
 
Makes a case for knowing what you're doing. Most people probably don't realize how easy it is to recover deleted files on a disk drive. They think files are gone once deleted. Would be interesting just to see what was left on it.

I probably would not make a fuss over it being an open box, but if you want a different drive then return it.
 
Two things. If Recuva is finding things, then even a very basic primitive wipe was never done. Secondly, how many evil people are on hardforum.com?
 
Well I didn't have time to dick around with it anyway, would of been interesting, but I returned it to get a 12TB drive from Best Buy. Maybe the store themselves was using it for customer tech repair, backing up files, then moving them to a new disk, who knows.
 
Plot twist, the original customer stored a couple zip bombs and cryptovirusses just to delete them in the hopes someone would buy the drive and get curious about its 65 powered on hours :D
 
Plot twist, the original customer stored a couple zip bombs and cryptovirusses just to delete them in the hopes someone would buy the drive and get curious about its 65 powered on hours :D

I guess me testing all drives I receive on linux would help with that.

With that said I have received a drive from a seller before with data on it. I just cleared out the data and went on with my life. Maybe if I was in my 20s I would have been interested but in my 40s I am not.
 
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That's really not a long time for a drive to operate. Mine operate 24/7 and have for years.

But a retail store selling a used drive as new.. no matter if it was used for 1 minute or 65 hours is still a scummy thing to do if they knew it was used.
 
But a retail store selling a used drive as new.. no matter if it was used for 1 minute or 65 hours is still a scummy thing to do if they knew it was used.

I agree, I'm simply saying that if the OP doesn't want to mess with it, the drive hasn't burned through a significant amount of its life span by any means.
 
I agree, I'm simply saying that if the OP doesn't want to mess with it, the drive hasn't burned through a significant amount of its life span by any means.

Ok but no one said that though, something sold as new should be new, no?
 
Autopsy and SANS Sift are free if you want to practice the art of digital forensics.
 
Ok but no one said that though, something sold as new should be new, no?
He said " I agree, ... " and compared to your original comment " 65 hours sold as new ? ....... " stating that 65 hours is not much for a hard drive was all.
 
That's really not a long time for a drive to operate. Mine operate 24/7 and have for years.

Yes, my oldest drive still in use that I just removed had 30,000 hours according to Crystal Disk Info. But still, who knows what someone did to the drive for those 65 hours, maybe they dropped it or damaged something internal or what was the reason was for the return anyway (was it giving them errors etc.) It also had fine scratches and dust/dirt on it too. Should I pay full brand new price for a drive that had scratches and dirt on it and trust my data on it? When I retired my three year old smart phone it was cleaner than this brand new drive was. Nah... I normally skip open box items depending on what it is. I'll buy floor display model washers and dryers when I'm in a pinch and can't wait for orders, but I think a hard drive I want brand new. I ran Crystal Disk Info on the new drives and both had 0 hours (but a couple power cycles, mabye factory testing?) I'm happy with the other two new drives I bought.
 
Yes, my oldest drive still in use that I just removed had 30,000 hours according to Crystal Disk Info. But still, who knows what someone did to the drive for those 65 hours, maybe they dropped it or damaged something internal or what was the reason was for the return anyway (was it giving them errors etc.) It also had fine scratches and dust/dirt on it too. Should I pay full brand new price for a drive that had scratches and dirt on it and trust my data on it? When I retired my three year old smart phone it was cleaner than this brand new drive was. Nah... I normally skip open box items depending on what it is. I'll buy floor display model washers and dryers when I'm in a pinch and can't wait for orders, but I think a hard drive I want brand new. I ran Crystal Disk Info on the new drives and both had 0 hours (but a couple power cycles, mabye factory testing?) I'm happy with the other two new drives I bought.

Unlikely. If someone else did significant damage to the drive, then it would have probably shown up very quickly. It's a precision mechanical device. It doesn't take much to actually break one. As for the reason for return, it's anyone's guess. It could be anything from they had a sudden expense to not really needing the part. It could have been purchased to help diagnose a problem or any number of other potential reasons. Dropping a drive if its not running isn't necessarily going to damage one. In the packaging, it happens quite a lot. Outside of the packaging, I've seen plenty of drives survive that. If running and bumped hard, things tend to go south immediately. Not after its been run awhile.

I'm not saying you shouldn't return it. If it was scratched up and dirty, I would too. I'm simply saying that If you run a bunch of tests on it and it shows as good, it probably is.
 
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