Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsBuyer Beware! Old/used drives being resold as new!
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2024
I received this FireCuda 8TB HDD 2 days ago and was pleasantly surprised at how well it was packaged/protected for shipping! I had received a WD Blue 8TB HDD about a week before that only came in the original box that the drive comes in when you buy it in store, which is no doubt why it arrived in a damaged box and DOA! No outer box, no air bags, no foam, no bubble wrap, etc., etc. Needless to say, I returned the WD drive and purchased this FireCuda hdd to replace it.... but now I have to return this one as well.
After not even being able to initialize the WD Blue HDD, I was happy that the setup, initializing, formatting, etc., for the Seagate went flawlessly.... right up until I needed to put files on it. I quickly found out that there was a "This drive is write protected" error that continuously popped up anytime I tried adding anything to it, change any setting, permissions, etc. I tried various troubleshooting steps to get it fixed, but to no avail. I then decided to go into the Event Log history to see if I could narrow down a cause for this, and that is when I found out what was really going on...... this "new" HDD that I ordered had been previously owned/used by at least one other person before I received it (attached photos)! I received this "new" drive on 17th Apr 2024, but in the photo you can see that someone was receiving errors on it back in January 2024. What's really incredible is that some other random person was using this drive on their home PC about 6 days before I received in from Amazon!!!
Even though the drive arrived in what I assumed was the original manufacturers packaging, the drive had already been used, was returned by the initial buyer, wiped clean by the seller(?), and then RESOLD AS A NEW DRIVE!!!! After spending a few minutes on Google, I found out that this is becoming more & more of a common practice, especially with the sky rocketing costs of PC storage!!
PLEASE check the history on the drive ASAP if purchasing an HDD from this seller! They are even able to bypass the SMART checks and are essentially just "resetting the odometer" on these drives now. I suspect that this is going to become more & more of a problem moving forward. You can Google this issue to see other photos that show where the dates on old drives are being erased by the manufacturers, sellers, or whoever, then being sold as brand new, unused drives
Just a heads up if you're in the market for any type of "new" HDDs!