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Question Toshiba 500GB 3.5" 7200rpm SATA HDDs - Opinions?

Mantrid-Drone

Mantrid-Drone

Senior member
A few weeks ago I bought a couple of these 500GB HDDs for under £25 ea.($34) which is cheap nowadays compared the more well known HDD brands. They're well presented in what looks like OEM factory sealed packaging and everything apparently as it should be.

The first one initialized and formatted without any trouble and Crystal DiskInfo showed it as genuinely new and with light use since then has worked OK.

However today I decided to use the other one and it quickly turned out that it was a dud. HDD death click with Windows reporting as being unable to format it. Tried it in a different external housing and, surprise, surprise same result.

Anyone else here had experience with Toshiba branded HDDs like this? Any problems? Any chance they're fake? If so are there any known tell tale signs?
 
Old drive with SMART data wiped. Could even be new label. Wait, 7200rpm, are these 3.5" drives? They stopped production of that around 2015. How can there be any new drives?
 
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I've had a fair few Toshibas come and go, I wouldn't say they're any more or less reliable than any other brand.

By curious coincidence, I'm going through a stack of old hard drives (500GB - 1TB, 2.5" and 3.5", all SATA) and getting ready to throw them out. I had hoped to find local people to sell them to so I didn't have to worry about P&P, but if UK people are interested and you know of a good way to get them safely from A to B, I'm all ears.
 
With a certain US person's mercurial tariffs and our own money grabbing HMRC slapping import duty on everything they can if you're looking to make some money selling used US HDDs to us impoverished Brits you're likely onto a loser. 🙂

I did not check the manufacturing date but I would not be surprised if these Toshiba's were genuine old stock that had been sitting in a UK warehouse somewhere for years. That doesn't explain the failure though, I've bought pre-owned IDE HDDs that were even older and they're still working/report as 100% good to this very day.

Reason I wanted these is a niche one in connection with a games' console. They have to be eeprom lockable and I've had increasing difficulty finding HDDs that support it, at least for this purpose. It can be down to the country of manufacture or just batch date whether they work or not.

For £25 a pop it was worth a gamble. The other one that is working locked without issue so I was actually going to buy a couple more for backup. But as this is the first 'new' HDD failure I've ever experienced I've pretty much scotched that idea now.
 
Return the dud for a refund? Did it look brand new coming out of the anti-static bag?

As mentioned, more likely they are "renewed" drives with the SMART data wiped. No competent business would spend the money to have these lie around for many years. (Sure, it's possible they had only 2 gathering dust.)

I can't remember what Backblaze's data looks like, but IIRC Toshiba's HDD are considered good (enough). I'd pick 'em before I'd buy consumer Seagate drives.

I thought $34 sounded awful for a 500GB HDD, but I guess we have the AI overlords to thank for that.
On that note, I have a new-in-box WD Black 1TB that I should just sell locally. After nearly a decade, it seems unlikely that I'll ever need it.
 
 
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Did that yesterday but getting full reimbursement rather than replacement. Didn't want another in case that too was dodgy. Ordered a WD500GB instead at about £10 more - wouldn't be surprised if that was old stock too.

The Toshiba was bought through Amazon and although the return options offered were potentially a PINTA, all others requiring a smart 'phone, the one that didn't (Royal Mail home collection) was actually very easy and efficient. Packaged it up, booked a collection slot, and the driver even provided the printed stick on return label.

Recommended, if you're in a similar situation in the UK.

Just have to wait "...up to 7 days..." for the reimbursement to appear in my account.
 
Obviously mikey was offering his drives in case the OP just happened to be interested.

Glancing at U.S. eBay, the standard price for a used 500GB desktop internal spinner is $20 shipped.

Brand new in box is worth more, but part of the value is having a real warranty.
Paying $40+ for one seems crazy, but I've made plenty of crazy tech purchases in a lifetime.

Amazon returns in the U.S. are quite friction-less, and they usually credit me the same day I hand off the item for return.
 
OP explained his rationale in post #5

Although I too have basically 0 interest in old SATA spinning rust, there's also an economic difference here.
At least for U.S. prices, $20 for a used WD Blue drive vs. about $80 for a KingSpec SATA SSD.
(For the warranty, do you ship it to Shenzhen?)
 
manly said:
OP explained his rationale in post #5

Although I too have basically 0 interest in old SATA spinning rust, there's also an economic difference here.
At least for U.S. prices, $20 for a used WD Blue drive vs. about $80 for a KingSpec SATA SSD.
(For the warranty, do you ship it to Shenzhen?)
Click to expand...
3 year warranty, if you bought it from Amazon it would be covered locally (op's case, UK) though the replacement may have to come from China.

I still have a few 2TB Hitachi HDD. Only for scratch duty though.

I missed the part about some console with eprom requirements.
 
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No such luck for Muricans, we have to go along with whatever the manufacturer's RMA process is. I glanced at KingSpec's web site and it doesn't explicitly say. But it's suggestive that I'd have to ship my SSD or DRAM to Shenzhen, China lol.
(I don't care if the replacement comes back from the motherland.)

Assuming he didn't have some strange legacy requirement, should he spend 4X to get SSD performance, reliability and the comfort of a long warranty? That's a very large multiple.
 
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