hdd temps

[m3vuv]

hi all,i just had a supposed refurbed hdd delivered today,its the 3rd one as they already replaced the first faulty one with a duff one as well,its a 3.5 inch 750 gig sata drive,been trying to format it but doesent want to complete,i left it run for an hour doing a quick format,when i felt the drive it was hot,as in nearly to hot to hold,is this normal or have they sent me another bum drive?,got it from dr memory on ebay.

[Benta]

How would they "refurbish" a hard drive? That normally needs clean rooms (plus other expensive equipment) and I can't imagine that being cost-effective.

The business model is probably more along the lines of "We have a container full of old HDDs. Let's just sell them, we can replace them 10 times if they don't work and still make money."

[Microdoser]

How would they "refurbish" a hard drive? That normally needs clean rooms (plus other expensive equipment) and I can't imagine that being cost-effective.

The business model is probably more along the lines of "We have a container full of old HDDs. Let's just sell them, we can replace them 10 times if they don't work and still make money."

Generally, 'refurbished' computer parts have the dust wiped or brushed off, then they are ready to be sold on...

[edpalmer42]

hi all,i just had a supposed refurbed hdd delivered today,its the 3rd one as they already replaced the first faulty one with a duff one as well,its a 3.5 inch 750 gig sata drive,been trying to format it but doesent want to complete,i left it run for an hour doing a quick format,when i felt the drive it was hot,as in nearly to hot to hold,is this normal or have they sent me another bum drive?,got it from dr memory on ebay.

Have you used something like CrystalDiskInfo to check the drive?  It will give you the SMART data and suggest whether the drive is healthy or not.

[Monkeh]

Has anyone even made 750GB drives in.. what, the last four or five years?

If it's not dead it will be soon. Buy a new drive from a reputable distributor instead of these dodgy eBay outlets. You'd think by the third one you might twig..

[m3vuv]

well its been sitting over 2 hrs now trying to format using windows disk manegement,its in a sata to usb caddy thing,its almost too hou to touch,is that normal?

[mariush]

No it's not normal. Send it back, they sent you a dud.

Tell them you're willing to pay the difference to a 1 TB drive, see if they'd be willing to have you pay something like 20$/euro/pounds to get a new 1 TB drive which should still be available for purchase new.

A hard drive should not be warmer than around 45-50c when installed into a case.

[wraper]

At best they will replace a dead PCB, or give a good drive that was returned without an actual fault. At worst, take a crappy HDD with bad blocks and run a factory format to hide them, maybe disable a faulty head or working head on a bad platter, and relabel it as a smaller drive. There are even are a brand new drives with head(s) disabled. Nobody will open hermetic block and replace something there. Too complicated and not economically viable.

[Halcyon]

It depends on the make/model. Some hard drives (some Seagate models come to mind) get *very* hot to the touch, particularly if just sitting on a bench.

Whenever I'm installing hard drives either in a case or working on them on a bench that requires a lot of I/O, I try to use active cooling (fans) whenever possible. Most drives "expect" it, especially if they are sustaining high read/write loads.

A hot drive, particularly if it's just the metal body that's heating up, is not a sign of a dodgy drive. It's a sign of inadequate airflow.

[Psi]

Sadly it's a common industry practice to perform repair/refurbishment/part-swaps on all faulty/RMA device and use those as the pool of replacement devices to send out for warranty claims.

Often the actual repair is done by a 3rd party and the quality/testing is pretty lacking.

[Rick Law]

It depends on the make/model. Some hard drives (some Seagate models come to mind) get *very* hot to the touch, particularly if just sitting on a bench.
...

I used a few Seagate 750gb (IDE), they did run very hot.  I had an extra fan on to help the cooling.

750gb was the max I could get for IDE, may be that is why the OP is looking at 750gb.  I switched that PC to PCI SATA card and the 750gb has been in storage since...

[m3vuv]

Well its been sat on the bench formating with  AOME partition assistant sincei first posted,basicaly most of today,its only got to 88% although thats using a usb drive caddy on usb1,could that be why?

[Halcyon]

Well its been sat on the bench formating with  AOME partition assistant sincei first posted,basicaly most of today,its only got to 88% although thats using a usb drive caddy on usb1,could that be why?

USB 1.1 is extremely slow by todays standards (12 Mbps max). Even just going up to USB 2.0 will improve your speeds immensely. I'd be very surprised if your hard drive enclosure didn't support USB 2.0 at least.

[m3vuv]

well it finaly formated,i took it out of the caddy and put it in the pc one one of the sata hdd channels,when the pc booted it didnt see the drive but said drive F needs formatting so said ok,it formated it again but only took about 30mins,seems ok at moment,just writing 458gb of data to it and its reporting it will take 5hrs,i guess thats somewhere near?.

[Rick Law]

Life is not long enough for "long" formatting a USB 1 disk drive over 32 gb... or writing 458gb of data.  USB 1 really was not intended for disks.  Size of directory, speed of disk, etc., will all add to the slow down  At the time USB 1, fire wire was the frequent alternative.

I suppose, good news is: since it finished formatting and can write, things are working out for you.

[DiTBho]

Generally, 'refurbished' computer parts have the dust wiped or brushed off, then they are ready to be sold on...

Yup 

as "bonus" sometimes with some extra tests to assure a minimal QA.

[DiTBho]

USB 1 really was not intended for disks

OHCI? it's for HID stuff (keyboard, mouse, etc) only 

[m3vuv]

Well its worked out ok,the drive is working fine installed into the pc,i gave them lousy feedback, as compo for my time wasted they have let me keep the drive and sent a 1tb replacement via dpd,it arrived today and works great,happy days,cheers all.

[macboy]

I once bought a "refurbished" drive from my local computer shop. The Seagate factory label on the drive clearly indicated refurbished (and was clearly different from a new drive's label). The serial number also came up as such on their warranty website. This drive worked just as well as the similar new ones it was in a RAID with.

I once bought a few "refurbished" high end enterprise drives from an online place that sounds like a breakfast joint, and what I got was drives which had TENS of THOUSANDS of hours (several years) of spin time according to SMART. Most had at least a few bad sectors and quickly developed more. That was a learning experience; I learned that such drives are simply old, used up drives retired from heavy service in some server farm somewhere. Those guys know what they are doing, and know that drive failure rate goes wildly upward after some age, so they retire working drives before that age, and dispose of them. These garbage drives are bought in bulk, dusted off, then resold as "refurbished" to unwitting users looking for a bargain. It's no bargain. They are used (used up), not refurbished, and they should be considered as junk. I use my junk drives to store secondary cold backups.

All hard drives will get hot, especially enterprise drives, or any 7200 RPM or higher drive. They need airflow. I have an external USB-SATA dock which holds the drive vertically and almost entirely exposed to air, ideal for convection cooling. Even that isn't enough to keep some drives from getting uncomfortably hot to the touch. Try to keep them below 40 deg C (warm, not hot feeling) and they will last much longer.