Just bougnt two new toshiba 14tb drives one for use and one for back up, and the one i put into an ecternal anclosure has connection issues and hang ups when transferring files. Upon checking drive health DiskInfo shows Reallocated Sectors Count currently at 11416, and it has been rising to this number everytime i try to transfer files to the drive. The first time i checked the normalized value vas at 96 now it is at 86. I am planning to refund the drive and get another one, but wanted to ask if anyone had issues with the model specified or had seen a similar case ?
should do a long smart test to confirm
Seen better, similar, and worse from multiple models of drives from multiple manufacturers either known to have suffered rough handling or where shipping damage’s suspected. Assuming the two drives shipped together I’d long test the other one too (I actually long test every drive I get and then check SMART as an acceptance test).
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They were shipped together but the other Drive is assumed to be fine, since i already moved about 7tb of files into it and cloned random files into the emty space until it was full to see if it worked fine.
The Borked drive however is completely unresponsive most of the time, it causes hangups and freezes when plugged into the pc and hangs up when transfering files or trying to run tests. Though neither drive seems to have any visual damage, nor do they sound any different than a normal drive.
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You can still run a long SMART test on a drive that contains data. Or you can use badblocks over the whole drive in non-destrustive mode.
I have two toshiba MG08 16TB drives in 24/7 homelab use of 2.5 years now with no issues. With issues this severe and sudden, either it got damaged shipping or it slipped through QA. But more likely the former. So I’d want to very thoroughly test the other drive before relying on it. Drives can get knocked and be damaged internally but look completely fine externally…
How were the drives packaged? The last drive I got shipped came in a special box with thick foam.
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If the files weren’t read back to verify integrity (and SMART wasn’t checked) that’s really more performance test than functional validation. I’ve had failing drives take writes in long running jobs without any issue being apparent until attempts were made to use them. And, while filling remaining space is a good idea, it’s hard to really get every sector. So +1 again for long test or badblocks.
Of all the failed drives I’ve dealt with only one has sounded different, mainly due to excess vibration. That was Red Pro which seemed to be fine electrically but timed out on partition table creation. Even the IronWolf Pro that showed up with the end of the box ripped off and wouldn’t spin up still sounded the same as other ST18000NT001s.
FWIW, I usually get 3.5s in a dedicated box with two plastic cup-like things that hold the ends of the drive (in its anti-static bag) and flex for shock absorption. Some sellers then overbox that with bubble wrap.
We’ve dropped some suppliers that were just bubble wrapping drives due to too many problems which seemed likely to be shipping related. Hard to tell for sure, though.
Closing remarks
Packaging wise they came in the plastic drive boxes hard drives come in, put into a cardboard box padded with paper. Similar to how you woulld pack glassware.
The working drive tested fine for both a sector check and the smart test,
However i still could not get the broken one to run a smart test. It kept saying test failed due to unspecified error, and when i tried doing a write test it could not write to the drive at all giving an error “writing error; SPTI Command sending error; Win32 Error. Code: 5. Access is denied”
The program kept giving this error regardless of the security or ownership settings, and the drive would lock up in a writing state when i tried transfering files to it, but the file transfer would remain showing 0b/s, while the dirve itself would dissappear from the computer, not appeariing in the device manager or disk manager. Weirdly enough the external enclosure would still appear in the device manager.
After i tried everything i could think of i decided to just go for the refund before i ran out of time.
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Yeah, that’s pretty minimal for hard drive packaging…
Yeah, that drive is beyond saving. It’s not so weird that the enclosure still shows up. The enclosure is just a usb->sata controller. Card readers also generally show up even if there is no card inserted.
Yeah, that’s the only option. I would advise to use another retailer for HDDs in the future.