Just thought I’d share this hassle.
Saw a “New” 14TB Toshiba HDD on ebay, bid and won. Just tested and it ain’t doing anything. Tried on 2 different machines that were known good, it had a very quiet beeping noise. Tried different SATA and power cables too that were known good. Diskpart didn’t see it, said “uninitialised” or something similar, but wouldn’t format.
Back to ebay seller it goes, hey ho!
I’ve enhanced the sound so you can hear it.
Oh, man. That is sketchy as hell…too bad. Did you contact the seller? How’d they respond?
Drives that are sold via sketchy platforms like ebay are often sold as ¨new¨.
But if those are sold for just a small fraction of the retail new price,
then you should start to be suspicious.
Because in many cases those drives are not new.
Also in regards to storage drives etc i would say just go to a proper Hardware shop / retailer.
I get that on platforms like Ebay you can get those drives for a fraction of the price.
But yeah it is still a gamble kinda.
Of course you could use linux to check the disks health etc.
But yeah from a proper retailer or hardware shop you at least get some warranty.
I have two issues with buying from eBay sellers outside of the small number I make regular purchases from:
‘New’ hard drives probably aren’t new. It’s not difficult on most drives to wipe the SMART data through various utilities.
Most electronics recyclers that get large volumes of drives being retired from enterprise don’t have/train employees that handle them properly. I’ve received drives which probably were new but were obviously thrown loosely into a box as they were pulled/transported. You’ll notice labels that are torn, edges that are flattened, etc. It’s common sense to us, but not necessarily to the recycler warehouse employees.
Not affiliated in any way, but I’ve had good luck buying from these sellers (in the general order of who I check when I’m looking for something):
Outside of USA, I’ve had luck with the refurbisher Bargain Hardware, who do sell on eBay, and on their own site.
Not the deepest catalogue, but pretty reliable in my experience.
But, I’ve only got a couple dozen used SAS disks. Their SATA drives are less of a bargain.
CEX/Webuy do a guarantee, IIRC of stuff they sell on, but limit where you can ship to
Would love to hear of other reputable resellers in the UK if anyone trusts any?
We don’t seem to have thriving refurb shops; more “pawn” style second hand shops
Yeah, bummer eh. Seller seems reasonable, I said to him that because of the cost, I wanted to use the formal way of getting a refund. I said:
“Hi, this item has been returned, here’s the receipt. I would have normally contacted you directly before starting the return process, but this is a lot of money for me and just need to have a drive that works.”
They said:
“yeah I would have refunded without the need to send back to save money but I guess I’ll wait now instead”
Which makes me think he wasn’t confident with the device’s reliability…so what’s the point in selling it???
You are right of course, over the last year I’ve bought around 15-20 brand new hard drives from retailers. The cost is just mounting up too much and I was looking for less investment as I near the end of the “to buy” list. 
Yeah, I mucked up eh @NorthernWing , I have bought a few genuine new drives off ebay for a slight discount, but only because the seller seemed genuine and a low turnover type.
Cheers for the recommendations, if they’re UK based I’ll certainly give them a look 
Cheers Troop, yeah I did try CEX but they didn’t have things in stock, the prices weren’t quite good enough to be a reasonable option.
I tend to stick with those that I trust, like Scan, ebuyer, may be novatech in a pinch. Sometimes they even do free postage for the most bought HDD’s. I see HDD’s have gone up a bit lately, bit annoying, but that’s the market eh! 
“If it works, it works” for about the length of time it needs to until your refund period ends…I don’t know. I don’t want to attribute malice, but you’re right.
It’s just weird though eh, what a strange business model, or even personal model. I always do full tests on any drive I get, I’d be disappointed with bad SMART results, but a drive that’s just dead - didn’t they think to check it?
The packaging was ideal, not a mark on it at all, looked new. All that effort, bizarre.
Could’ve also just died in shipping 
Shipping here in neighboring Ireland is a mess. I guess pay in logistics is getting the squeeze.
I wouldn’t be surprised if drives were thrown around more in shipping than they would have otherwise.
For example, DPD who used to be fairly reliable, now take 2 days from one side of the city to another, and instead of couriers we now get taxi dropping off boxes in the bushes in front of the house without even bothering to ring the doorbell. We had UPS say “you weren’t home so we left your packages in the locker 2 streets away”, spoiler: we were home and there was no delivery attempted, have 24/7 cameras to prove it. At the locker, we ran into other people who complained about the same, driver/delivery person was likely just lazy and decided to cut their day short/early. About the only thing that improved over the last 2 years for me is Amazon, surprisingly.
Too true.
Umm, by coincidence it came from Belfast 
And that story is bad, I’d be well annoyed. If I did a postie job, I might not like it, but I’d do it properly. Self respect for one, but also because I’d be advertising that reliability which could lead to an opportunity.
Just to close off this thread, I did get a full refund.