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seagate enterprise capacity
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Seagate Enterprise Capacity V4 (ST6000NM024) drive purchasing experience
After doing my homework on the best option to load up my new RN204 diskless empty drive bays, I was down to a choice between the 6TB WD Red Pro and the 6TB Seagate Enterprise Capacity V4 (ST6000NM024). The WD Red Pro is a good option but I began to feel like the Seagate was more of a true datacenter-class drive. Many of the specs between the two drives including MTBF and 5 year warranty were similar, but what finally convinced me was the significantly higher duty-cycle ratings for the Seagates. The WD and Seagate drives are priced pretty similarly on Amazon and as I made the decision the Red Pro's seemed to be pretty consistently out of stock and back-ordered unless you were willing to pay a premium price. I went ahead and bit on the Seagates and ordered two from one of the Amazon Marketplace resellers. My only real hesitation was that I was a bit worried about getting OEM drives due to some of the other comments I've seen, They arrived packaged fairly well. The main Amazon packaging was fairly typical with a smaller box inside a larger Amazon box and a few air pillows for minimal cushioning. The smaller boxes were solid and had more cushioning wrapped around the bare drives. These do appear to be bulk packaged, OEM drives. I checked serial numbers with Seagate and they confirmed they have good warranty status. The only thing a bit unusual is that the warranty started when the reseller purchased the drives and Seagate will not adjust the warranty dates based on my purchase date. They did tell me that if you buy from Amazon directly they will adjust the date, but not for the marketplace resellers. Before loading them into the ReadyNAS I dropped them into an eSata external docking bay and ran several Seagate Seatools tests. All Smart data appears consistent with brand new drives. I also ran the short self test, the short and long generic tests (all of these are read only) and the long Write/Erase test. The longer tests run around 12 to 14 hours each on my setup. The first drive passed all tests with no issues. The second drive failed the write/erase test after passing the generic tests and I returned it. I could hardly believe it but the replacement drive also failed the testing. It was rather flakey from the beginning. It was extra noisy and would intermittently fail even the short tests. I was a little skeptical about receiving two bad drives in a row and I began to wonder if my testing procedure was flawed. I kept at it trying for good results and even switched over to a different computer using a different USB3 dock. I thought that resolved the issue for a while because the drive started passing the tests, but eventually it failed again and I wrote it off. I returned that drive and ordered one more. The 4th drive passed all tests with no issues. In summary I feel like I got a good deal on the 6TB Seagate Enterprise Capacity V4 drives from Amazon market place, but out of 4 drives, two of them failed initial testing. If you have the time and patience it seems like a decent option. I'm now pretty comfortable I have a couple of solid drives that should provide a long life of reliable service. (Knock on wood).2.6KViews0likes1Comment