Late last year I decided to take a chance on some recertified ironwolf 10TB drives, and they seem to be doing well so far. (I was encouraged to try them after seeing LTT experiment with these kinds of drives from server parts deals)
However, my offsite backup truenas machine now appears to have a dying ironwolf 4TB (3 months out of warranty!💩) due to failing smart tests, but when looking for a replacement drive, I can only find new ones (and a new 4TB costs as much as the 10TB did for me a year ago).
I’ve heard seagate has made an official ebay shop for recertified drives - have they been cracking down on the practice in general? Was the idea of these drives simply too risky? Am I just terrible at searching for deals online?
Seagate just broke up a massive counterfeiting ring where drives were being passed off as new and having their SMART values tweaked. That’s a good part of the reason they’re controlling the refurbs so that they can check them. It’s also why you saw Seagate getting hammered in the BB charts.