How reliable is SMART data?

Bluecube

Bluecube

Bluecube

Soldato
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I picked up a second hand hard drive on the basis that according to the seller it had only been used for 96 hours. I checked the SMART info on the drive and it gave a more realistic value of 33,000 hours.

Before I send it back, how reliable is SMART info? I don’t doubt it but the seller seems reliable enough so I’m wandering where he got 96 hours from!
 
Does the 33,000 hours add up based on the manufacturing date of the drive? That's about 4 years assuming it was continuously on from manufacture.
 
AtaRo said:
Is it a Seagate IronWolf HDD?
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No it’s a WD Gold
Philtor said:
What are you using to read the SMART data? Shouldn’t make any difference but I would use CrystalDiskInfo to be sure.
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The drive was installed in an Unraid server so I used the inbuilt tools to read the SMART data which I think are the standard Linux utils
Tetras said:
maybe he was telling the truth, he did use it for only 96 hours, he just neglected to mention the 32904 before he got it
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Got a point there! He did seem surprised that I’d managed to find the 33,000 figure
LuckyBenski said:
Does the 33,000 hours add up based on the manufacturing date of the drive? That's about 4 years assuming it was continuously on from manufacture.
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Can’t remember the precise date but when I read it I thought exactly what you’ve just written. Not too much data was written to the drive but the power on hours were a bit much
 
There are guys out there that can reset hard drive, nvme and ssd smart data, even if WD and Samsung are patching it there is always a demand for it to be reset to get fuller values.

At this point brand new boxed from the retailers seems the safest way forward.
 
HighlandeR said:
There are guys out there that can reset hard drive, nvme and ssd smart data, even if WD and Samsung are patching it there is always a demand for it to be reset to get fuller values.

At this point brand new boxed from the retailers seems the safest way forward.
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Which is exactly what I ended up doing. I initially bought two "refurbished" drives but both had seen significant usage. One had been run for over five years and had seen nearly 3 Petabytes of data during that time... There's only so much refurbishment, if any, that can be done extend the life of such drives.
 
On the likes of Ebay, Amazon marketplace and even some retailers, being listed as refurbished means that it was taken out of a system, maybe wiped (although I have heard of people who recieved a drive with all the previous owners data still on it) and put up for sale. There's not a lot you can actually do to "refurbish" a drive. Take refurbished with a pinch of salt when buying anything used.
 
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pastymuncher said:
On the likes of Ebay, Amazon marketplace and even some retailers, being listed as refurbished means that it was taken out of a system, maybe wiped (although I have heard of people who recieved a drive with all the previous owners data still on it) and put up for sale. There's not a lot you can actually do to "refurbish" a drive. Take refurbished with a pinch of salt when buying anything used.
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I've bought a WD Recertified drive, saved a decent saving . Generally hard drives are reliable so even if I get 50% life of a "brand new retail drive" that will be fine, as by the time the hard drives become useless in capacity, they still work fine. I've got a few 250GB drives that still work , that capacity is now totally waste of time.
 
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