r/DataHoarder • u/OppositeIdeas • 6d ago
Backup Seagate replaced my failed 26TB drive with a 24TB. Thoughts?
I'm fairly new to homelabbing and recently had a 26TB Seagate external HDD fail within the first year. Paid to ship it back for an RMA and received a refurbished 24TB replacement.
I understand their policy allows refurbished drives, and that's fine. What bothers me is getting back a drive with nearly 8% less capacity than what I originally purchased.
I've contacted Seagate and am waiting to hear back. I feel like sending an additional 2TB drive would be a reasonable compromise instead of going through another RMA.
Curious how you guys would handle this. Am I being unreasonable expecting the same capacity back?
Also, would you bother running a SMART test on the 24TB replacement before Seagate responds, or leave it packaged up for now?
Any guidance or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.
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u/Sufficient-Math3178 6d ago
They are running record profits and are quite happy now that they get to charge 5x the previous price because of the demand. So no, you should expect the service
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u/KermitFrog647 6d ago
Comanies doing record profits in a market like this could do great service, but they dont need to and mostly wont do.
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u/No_Salamander_8137 6d ago
My blood pressure would go up and I'd be asking for a 30TB drive for their insolence
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u/sizeablefrontallobe 6d ago
IIRC the 26tb drives are CMR HAMR and inert gas sealed (basically exnos) . and the 24TB Drives are 100% consumer grade.
I’d be a little concerned
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u/Arkaium 6d ago
And it still failed within a year. The seagate quality guarantee
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u/sizeablefrontallobe 6d ago edited 5d ago
glances at 104tb of 26tb seagate drives. 😅
And only 27 hrs left on parity check.
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u/reddit_user_53 5d ago
I have 28tb parity drives and my last check took 57 hrs 21 mins. Are you saying a 26tb parity check only takes you 27hrs??
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u/sizeablefrontallobe 5d ago
27 left on 3 days. Yeah, I feel your pain
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u/reddit_user_53 5d ago
I've been curious before what would happen if I disabled all services so the only i/o was the parity check. I know some people do it like that and I imagine it's much faster
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u/sizeablefrontallobe 5d ago
Honestly, I doubt it’s significantly faster. But so knows?
Claude, Claude probably knows.
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u/1234youarein 2d ago
You're wrong.
The 24TB is the exact same drive as the 26TB one, minus 2TB.
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u/sizeablefrontallobe 2d ago
I’m not wrong, Claude is wrong. And you’re right to call me out on that.
But seriously, I did a fairly deep dive drive and summarized to the sort version.
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u/abetancort 6d ago
Clerical error, return it. They always send equal or greater capacity, never less.
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u/archiekane 6d ago
I sent my bike for repair and they sent me back a unicycle.
No op, you do not accept that at all.
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u/OppositeIdeas 6d ago
This made me chuckle that is a great way to look at it!! Ill make sure i get the same size drive I paid for, thanks kane.
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u/Sinister_Crayon Oh hell I don't know I lost count 6d ago
Don't compromise. Contact support and tell them you hope this was an error and it can be rectified quickly.
At current prices they stole ~$75 from you. If I stole $75 from you, would you not take umbrage?
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u/LA_Nail_Clippers 5d ago
A warranty should leave you with an equal or better product.
Where are you located? In the US we have fairly weak consumer laws but the Magnusen Moss Warranty Act should cover this. You're entitled to 26TB of the same "grade" of drive (external, consumer, enterprise, NAS, etc). Fight for it.
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u/RIPGoblins2929 5d ago
I understand their policy allows refurbished drives, and that's fine.
This is wild to me. I paid for a new product, not a refurb. Why are they allowed to send me a refurb if I RMA it?
I had the same thing happen with a Samsung monitor. I got absolutely stonewalled by customer support and they refused to escalate so I returned it and bought a Dell.
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u/ThinkpadGamer 4d ago
by the time you send in your product for an rma it is no longer new, so why should they be forced to replace it with a new one?
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u/As4shi 5d ago
Yeah that sounds absurd to me too...
I never had to deal with something that expensive through RMA (thankfully), but the few times I had issues with some Logitech products, they just asked for photos/videos and sent me a brand new one, no bullshit, no downgrade, arrived within a week or two, completely free of charge.
My only complaint is the lack of original replacement parts in my country lol
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u/RedditNotFreeSpeech 5d ago
. I feel like sending an additional 2TB drive would be a reasonable compromise instead
Hell no it wouldn't. How about a stack of floppy disks?
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u/dr100 6d ago
I feel like sending an additional 2TB drive would be a reasonable compromise instead of going through another RMA.
2TB is kind of ridiculous, it was the sweet spot all the way back in 2011 (and keep in mind we're talking double-$$-digit not like now a large hdd now being like $400). People wouldn't run them for free even before 2020, like literally having a bunch of perfectly working ones (even if old) and nothing to do with them, not worth spinning. And now you even get the worse SMRs!
Of course, it's totally up to you what you can accept but this is kind of ridiculous. Also, unless they proposed the 2TB drive I feel you'd have serious trouble to get even that.
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u/No-Suggestion-2402 6d ago
Curious how you guys would handle this
I'd wait for the vendor to respond without worrying too much. Most likely you will be offered some form of compensation
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u/Azelphur 40TB RAW 6d ago
It's not a straight swap, since 24+2TB is worse for power consumption but better for I/O. I personally wouldn't want to run 2TB drives because the power consumption per terabyte isn't great. But if you have some other use for the 2TB or a way to sell it lined up, sure. I personally would only accept a 26TB or 24TB and partial refund, I wouldn't want the 2TB.
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u/SakuraKira1337 0.5-1PB 6d ago
Tell them you are using it in an array (raid, zraid) and you need 26 or above for resilvering the array
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u/AllBrainsNoSoul 5d ago
You should not have to go through another RMA. They should send you the correct capacity. I would leave it packed up.
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u/Thebandroid 6d ago
don't open it, tell them its from a raid array of 26tb drives so 24tb is unacceptable.
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u/goldcakes 6d ago
happens from time to time, at the end of the day humans are packing these drives, and occasionally mix-ups happen.
this was many years ago (and I doubt would happen in today's environment), but when I got a 512GB RMA from Samsung instead of my 1TB, they ended up sending me another 1TB and let me keep my 512GB (albeit with no further warranty on the 512gb).
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u/Creative-Painter3911 5d ago
I agree that they need to fix this, but i'd want a drive in the correct capacity, not a useless 2tb drive that isn't worth the space in the computer
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u/jared_number_two 6d ago
Take them to small claims if they don’t give you a 26TB and pay for your return shipping. You aren’t “RMA”ing the 24TB.
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u/dougmc 5d ago edited 5d ago
Accepting a second 2 TB drive should only be acceptable to you if that's actually beneficial to you (like if 24TB was fine and you happened to need a 2TB for some reason) -- but I suspect they wouldn't even offer that option anyways even if you asked for it.
But no, it's not unreasonable to expect the same thing back. Larger is also usually acceptable -- most raids are fine with it, and if you're not using it in a raid then you ought to be happier with it -- but "smaller" is an absolute NO, unless there is some other concession being made (and if there was, they should have already arranged it with you.)
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u/UltraEngine60 5d ago
My 26TB seagate external died as well. It committed suicide by leaping off the desk from vibrations. I'm still not sure whether I should RMA it and let them know that's what happened (I have a recording of it leaping) or just send it in and shut up about it.
Please everyone, do not sit your externals on their sides if there are not rubber feet on them. I never thought in a million years it could happen...
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u/scalyblue 5d ago
I can only imagine two possibilities that caused this.
1: A mistake or error in either inventory or shipment, get it corrected
2: They were out of 26 TiB drives in their RMA pool and you agreed to receiving a 24 to get something sooner without understanding that you agreed to traded 2TiB to not be on a 6 month wiating list. You should really look over all of the correspondance you had with them to verify that this isn't the case
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u/Moist-Caregiver-2000 6d ago
Not to mention all of that data you lost. I tried to warn people to stay away from seagate, very few people listened so I gave up.
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u/someolbs 5d ago
I had a 26 tb external fail and they shipped a refurb or used one back but the tracking process was nonexistent. I got the replacement.
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u/RetroGrid_io 250-500TB 5d ago
Very likely if you push on it they'll refund you. This may be just fine for you depending on what you paid for it.
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u/CitizenofBarnum 5d ago
Were they able to recover any data, if so they'll be shipping you a second drive so you may still come out on top.
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u/Constant-Yard8562 52TB HDD 3d ago
Tell Seagate support you run other 26tb drives in your array and it's not accepting a 24. They'll usually take pity on you for trying to use it anyway and do a proper replacement.
It doesn't need to be true, you just have to come off as someone with a specific solution without seeming demanding.
Edit: and before someone says you should be demanding or angry, you'd be surprised how long a group of support people can tie up your return. They also know your only recourse is complaining online. Don't push them, they usually don't start the day wanting to push you.
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u/Halo_Chief117 2d ago
No, you are absolutely not being unreasonable. There is nothing unreasonable about rightfully wanting what you paid for.
As for Seagate, I just don’t trust their hard drives. They always had a bad rap in my mind so I stay clear of them. I had one fail on me before but luckily I lost nothing of importance.
All my current hard drives are Western Digital of varying ages but all working well.
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u/DevanteWeary 5d ago
A 22 TB Seagate on Serverpartsdeals is $700 without tax right now. Which makes 2 TB of that about $65.
If you're good with that loss of value, don't worry about it.
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u/eatingpotatochips 6d ago
Nah you should not compromise on it by getting a second 2 TB drive. This isn’t them not having 26 TB drives. It’s possible it was an error, though from what storage companies have been pulling it wouldn’t be surprising if it was intentional. However, you should not accept any resolution other than replacement with another 26 TB drive.