Age of newly purchased disks

[ovrspec 0]

I have just taken delivery of two 4TB HGST UltraStar 7K4000 drives that I purchased this week, all good except when I cut them out of their anti static bags I was shocked to see that the sticker on the drives says "JAN-2014". If I'm not mistaken (?) that's the month/year of manufacture.

Every other drive I've purchased in the past was made at least in the same year, this is the first time I've had 3+ year old drives delivered, should I be concerned about the reliability of these drives? The model comes with a 5 year warranty, but still...

 

[Brian 153]

You can run SMART tools to ensure they're new, but I'd not worry. 

[Katy 1]

I wouldn't worry either, especially when it involves HGST. These are exceptionally good drives, hence the 5 year warranty. In February 2016 I bought 2 3TB HGST drives, both of them produced also in 2014. They're running non-stop ever since, in a small business server, and are in perfectly good condition SMART wise.

For your peace of mind, have a look at the Blackblaze's stats:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/

HGST drives have extremely low failure rates, around 1%, some models way bellow 1%. Their price and the 5 year warranty are well justified.

[continuum 17]

Out of curiosity, which retailer were they from? I generally don't worry much about manufacturer date on drives, but "new" "old" stock that old is unusual.

 

[ovrspec 0]

Thanks for the responses, the disks are definitely brand new and unused (power on hours = 0). I got them from Scan, a well respected supplier in the uk. 

 

 

 

[SgtSixpack 0]

Scan are out of stock of HGST drives now.  I bought a https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/files/resources/DS_NAS_ds.pdf

OSO4005 which is in the post, but its the newer version of OSO3665, one of which I have already.

I was looking for an identical drive to the one I have but amazon suggested a similar drive and it was a no brainer, newer version + double the 64Mb cache of older one.

Edited August 17, 2017 by SgtSixpack

[larrymoencurly 0]

In 2016 Fry's offered Toshiba MK2002TSKB enterprise drives for $59 with 5-year warranty, only the warranty started at the date of manufacture, and these drives had been manufactured 4 years earlier.   They were not advertised as refurbished, and the SMART data indicated they were new (although SMART can be erased), but they didn't come in metallic anti-static bags, only hard plastic clamshells, many which were dented and cracked.  Toshiba's own product manual said they had to be operated every 6 months and shipped in anti-static bags.  

Some Fry's customers exchanged them for brand-new WD Black drives, but I got HGST Ultrastars instead.  

 

 

 

 

[continuum 17]

With proof of purchase, the manufacturer warranty should be from date of purchase.

 

However... 2012 to 2016 is extremely abnormal, and I would wonder what the hell happened there.

[Brian 153]

Agreed, that gap is bizarre.

[jtsn 5]

There was a HDD price hike in 2011 and following years with some people/companies starting to hoard HDDs. Looks like these "futures" reappear on the market now.