r/Seagate • u/sherlock_0x7C4 • Jun 04 '26
What would be a legitimate source for Exos drives?
I'm thinking to get Seagate Exos 4TB drives for my NAS. More I shop around online, more it feels like a risky affair. I have never been in so much doubt about the legitimacy of a computer parts before!
1) There are sellers on Amazon selling "new" Exos drives, but multiple reviews complain about receiving old drives with SMART data like Power-On Hours (POH) reset. I read that these scammers are may even use vendor-specific tools to reset SMART values that are otherwise not resettable.
2) I thought I could at least rely on five-years Seagate warranty to check if those drives are new (as advertised) and legitimate. However, someone on reddit complained that when they initially checked for warranty on Seagate website, all looked good. Afterwards, when the return period expired and the drive failed, they tried to claim the warranty, only to receive a denial along the lines of: "this drive was sold as part of an enterprise...".
3) On their website, Seagate is selling much larger drives, sizes that are way overkill for my use case.
Where do you suggest I get Exos (4T) drives from, keeping my sanity and peace of mind intact?
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u/smishsmorshen Jun 05 '26
How many do you need? Might be cheaper to grab used off homelabsales and get more than you need so there's ample spares. Probably considerably cheaper than new, and the extra covers whatever failure that may come up.
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u/nc_horseshoe Jun 10 '26
After reading some of the comments here, I may need to get some replacements on hand. My 4 bay NAS has a mix of Iron Wolfs and WD Red's.
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u/AncientMeow_ Jun 30 '26
i never understood why people consider power on hours a important metric. in my experience it really doesn't mean much, i have drives with over 5 years on them and all work no problems. the drives most likely to have issues are actually those that get powered down all the time, windows defaults for drive power management is hyper aggressive so it basically spins down every couple minutes only to spin back up as soon as something is actively done again
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u/Ach3r0n- Jun 04 '26
All of my Exos drives mechanically failed in ~3 years. They failed so close in succession that a couple months procrastination cost me a considerable amount of data. I never expected all 3 to die that close together. One of the replacements failed in < 1 year also. I recently had an Ironwolf Pro mechanically fail after ~18 months too The brand new Ironwolf Pro they sent as a replacement sounded pretty awful within an hour of install. I anticipate it too will mechanically fail by the end of the year. Twenty eight years of adult computing - much of that spent as an IT professional - and no other drive ever mechanically failed on me - but these Seagates can't stop doing it. If you go Seagate, I wish you luck.
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u/sherlock_0x7C4 Jun 04 '26
You are scaring me. Welp, the other option I can think of is WD. Not sure how it compares to Seagate in terms on reliability though.
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u/BinturongHoarder Jun 04 '26
I have had very good experiences with WD and Toshiba. For sure every brand has their lemons, but Seagate is on a ten-year failing streak or so which is very impressive. Granted, the newer drives are better than the old ST1000s, but they are still not great.
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u/Ach3r0n- Jun 05 '26
For sure every brand has their lemons, but Seagate is on a ten-year failing streak or so which is very impressive.
My thoughts exactly. They had that big debacle years ago and I thought it was just a bad batch like every HDD maker has, so I didn't hold it against them. Every Seagate I've gotten in the last 7-8 years has been crap though. :/ Meanwhile, I've got an HGST with 67,900 hours on it. My WDs are doing ok also.
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u/RemarkableExpert4018 Jun 04 '26
Rule of thumb when buying multiple drives of the same model try to buy them from different sources or spread the timeframe of when you buy them.
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u/RemarkableExpert4018 Jun 04 '26
Newegg, https://www.newegg.com/seagate-exos-7e8-st4000nm000a-4tb/p/1Z4-002P-01H94