Recertified hard drives from ServerPartDeals offer reliable, high-capacity storage solutions with rigorous testing and cost-saving benefits.
ServerPartDeals.com is a specialized online retailer that sources and sells a wide range of enterprise-grade server components—most notably HDDs and SSDs, including hard-to-find high-capacity models. In addition to their extensive storage catalog, they also offer CPUs, memory modules, RAID controllers, and other server essentials. What sets them apart is their dedication to recertified hardware, carefully tested to ensure quality and performance. This approach grants businesses and enthusiasts access to cost-effective, high-quality parts that might be prohibitively expensive or unavailable elsewhere.
What are Recertified Hardware Anyway?
Recertified hardware refers to previously warrantied products and parts that were purchased but never shipped due to order cancellations. It can also refer to returned products that have undergone a comprehensive inspection and testing process by the manufacturer to meet their specifications for new hardware. Manufacturers like Seagate, Western Digital, and other major brands often perform this process, ensuring the products perform like new. Ensuring optimal performance involves checking for functional issues, repairing or replacing faulty components, and resetting all S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data. ServerPartDeals focuses on testing for recertified and used/refurbished drives.
Recertified products are an excellent cost-saving option. They offer the same reliability as new components at a lower price, making them especially appealing for businesses with budget constraints. ServerPartDeals specializes in providing recertified server-grade parts (including HDDs and SSDs), ensuring they meet rigorous standards before resale.
What is Refurbished Hardware & How Does It Differ?
There is a significant distinction between recertified and refurbished IT equipment. Refurbished equipment typically refers to products returned to the manufacturer due to defects, damage, or customer dissatisfaction. Products that have been taken off-lease and sent back to the manufacturer are also candidates for refurbishment.
Refurbished items undergo additional inspections, testing, repair, and restoration to make them like new, but they cannot be offered as new. Refurbs might have a 90-day warranty but would not qualify for the typical new product warranty. They may also come from unknown sources and have an uncertain history, higher mileage, or be off-lease items, leading to uncertainty about their condition and reliability.
Refurbishing sometimes, but not always, involves repairing, replacing, or cleaning components to restore functionality. However, they may also have slight cosmetic imperfections or signs of previous use.
While ServerPartDeals primarily offers recertified hardware, it also provides new and refurbished alternatives. New or recertified hardware meets the original manufacturer’s specifications and is ideal for enterprise-grade use. In contrast, refurbished hardware offers a cost-effective alternative with varying levels of restoration.
How Does ServerPartDeals Ensure Quality?
ServerPartDeals ensures the highest quality by prioritizing transparency and thorough testing in their recertification and refurbishing process. Recertified and refurbished drives undergo exhaustive testing for reliability to ensure optimal performance. These tests include analyzing critical S.M.A.R.T. data points such as reallocated sectors and error rates, performing extensive read/write speed tests, and running a selective sector scan to verify that every sector can be reliably read and written to. Additionally, they conduct batch testing to identify failure trends, assess failure rates, and test for CRC errors to ensure long-term reliability.
Once the drives pass all these tests, they are marked as “Tested Good” and offered with a 2-year manufacturer-recertified warranty on many drives. This process ensures the drives are restored to like-new condition, giving customers the confidence that their purchase will perform as expected. With ongoing support available for any issues, ServerPartDeals demonstrates its commitment to delivering quality recertified components, making them a reliable and cost-effective choice for budget-conscious buyers.
Shipping and Packaging Quality Assurance
Most mechanical drive failures occur during shipping and handling, and ServerPartDeals takes this very seriously. To mitigate these risks, the drives are shipped in well-padded, secure packaging, which entails 225 lb-per-sq inch pressure-rated boxes designed to shield them from impacts during transit. This ensures that customers receive their drives in reliable working condition. ServerPartDeals offers same-day shipping with free UPS 2-day shipping within the lower 48 states, free ground 3-7-day shipping to other territories, and additional handling methods for International orders, demonstrating their commitment to quality and service. Below are some examples of this exceptional packaging for the drives they sent us.
Four Drives in a custom high-density polyethylene foam drive carrier.
Six Drives in a large box with padded sides, top and bottom, each individually boxed.
Pictured single drive protected in an ESD bag and a bubble-wrapped sleeve.
Customer Support and Warranty Policies
ServerPartDeals demonstrates its commitment to quality by providing an FAQ page on its website that addresses common issues and their solutions. If the FAQ does not resolve your concern, ServerPartDeals encourages customers to contact its support team during business hours, Monday through Friday, from 9 AM to 6 PM EST.
ServerPartDeals offers a Special Order Quote service for bulk orders, which provides additional discounts. Furthermore, it gives options for enterprises and businesses to sell back their old enterprise storage or networking products.
Regarding warranty support, ServerPartDeals ensures a straightforward process. Customers need an RMA number and proof of purchase to initiate a return. The support team will then provide detailed instructions for returning the drives for replacement. This process is well-documented in the FAQ section of their website, ensuring transparency and ease for customers.
ServerPartDeals also offers a Satisfaction Guarantee, allowing customers to return their purchase for a full refund within 30 days of the package reception date.
Post-Delivery Drive Evaluation and Testing
ServerPartDeals sent us several of their recertified high-capacity helium drives, including the WD HC570 22TB, Seagate Exos 24TB, and Seagate Exos X24 24TB models, for us to showcase.
Before diving into testing, we’ll first compare the pricing of recertified and new drives. The recertified Seagate Exos X24 24TB is listed at $449.99, while the new unit costs $479.99, offering a $30 savings. Similarly, the Western Digital DC HC570 22TB jumps from $304.99 for the recertified model to $489.00 for the new, providing a significant $184 savings. Meanwhile, the recertified Seagate Exos 24TB is priced at $339.99, compared to $348.99 for a new unit, showing a modest $9 difference. While new drives come with full manufacturer warranties and potentially longer lifespans, recertified options offer substantial savings, a reliable 2-year warranty, and comparable annualized failure rates (AFRs). This makes them a compelling choice for budget-conscious enterprise storage, especially in bulk purchases.
For testing, we will use CrystalDiskInfo 9.5.0 to display S.M.A.R.T. data and overall drive health and CrystalDiskMark 8.0.6 to perform a basic speed read/write benchmark. This will allow us to assess the overall drive performance, verify their health after shipping, and ensure the recertified drives meet reliability and speed expectations.
CrystalDiskInfo 9.5.0 Results
First, we have the CrystalDiskInfo results for the Seagate Exos 24TB drive. The health status is reported as “Good” with no notable issues identified in the S.M.A.R.T. data. This drive shows a Power-On Count of 5 and Power-On Hours of 7, indicating minimal usage.
Second, we have the Seagate Exos X24 24TB drive. Like the previous drive, its health status is reported as “Good” with no notable issues identified. This drive shows a Power-On Count of 4 and Power-On Hours of 3, indicating minimal usage.
Lastly, we have the Western Digital HC570 22TB drive, which also shows a health status of “Good.” This drive has seen fewer hours than the others, with a Power-On Count of 1 and less than 1 hour of Power-On Time recorded.
CrystalDiskMark 8.0.6 Benchmark Results
Moving on to the CrystalDiskMark results for the Seagate Exos 24TB drive, the highest sustained read speed recorded was 236.37 MB/s, while the write speed reached 233.41 MB/s. This drive operates at 7200 RPM and has a rated maximum sustained transfer rate of 270 MB/s (258 MiB/s) at the outer disk(OD).
Next, the Seagate Exos X24 24TB outperforms the non-X variant slightly despite having the same spindle speed of 7200 RPM. It achieved a maximum sustained read speed of 281.47 MB/s and a write speed of 277.46 MB/s. The drive is rated for a maximum sustained transfer rate at the (OD) of 285 MB/s (272 MiB/s).
To conclude the CrystalDiskMark tests, we assessed the Western Digital HC570 22TB drive. Operating at 7200 RPM, this drive achieved a maximum sustained read speed of 282 MB/s and a write speed of 280.43 MB/s. It is rated for a transfer speed of up to 291 MB/s.
Based on all tests, the drives demonstrated sustained transfer rates ranging between 87% and 98.7% of their rated performance, confirming no performance issues with the drives we received.
Conclusion
The recertified drives we received from ServerPartDeals performed like new ones, with no issues observed during our testing. Since transit is the area that can hurt drives the most, ServerPartDeals mitigates this by using excellent packaging and high-quality shipping materials to ensure safe delivery.
While this review focused on ServerPartDeals’ refurbished and recertified HDDs, their extensive inventory includes much more than hard drives. ServerPartDeals offers a broad selection of enterprise SSDs in various interface types, such as U.2, U.3, SATA, SAS, and NVMe M.2 form factors. Additionally, they provide GPUs, cabling, network cards, RAID cards, servers, JBODs, and other essential hardware for enterprise environments.
ServerPartDeals consistently excels in customer satisfaction. They maintain an impressive 4.9-star rating with over 5,000 reviews on Shopper Approved and 99.9% positive feedback on their eBay store, where they’ve sold more than 138,000 items. Many customers have shared positive experiences in the comments sections of their videos, praising the quality of the drives and hardware they received.
We asked our subscribers on the StorageReview Discord server about the use of recertified and refurbished drives. Many participants reported that they had no concerns regarding these drives, especially considering the cost savings for applications such as NAS setups or servers operating in RAID configurations.
A standout feature of ServerPartDeals is their access to an inventory of hard-to-find drives. This includes high-capacity SSDs and HDDs ranging from 600GB to 28TB and beyond, which are sometimes available in significant quantities. ServerPartDeals often carries more common sizes of these drives in bulk, making it easier for businesses and IT professionals to procure the exact quantities needed for large-scale deployments, whether new, enterprise-used, or recertified.
ServerPartDeals is a trusted provider of high-quality, affordable storage solutions and enterprise hardware. It is an excellent choice for IT professionals and enthusiasts, particularly those operating within a cost-conscious budget.
This report is sponsored by ServerPartDeals.com. All views and opinions expressed in this report are based on our unbiased view of the product(s) under consideration.
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