Water Panther WP Arsenal 20TB SAS 12Gb/s 7200RPM 3.5-Inch DAS Hard Drive for Storage Server, Enterprise JBOD, Business RAID Workstation, Internal SAS LFF HDD (Renewed)

In the past, I've been very reluctant to buy refurb HDDs, since HDDs are the computer component most susceptible to physical damage from mis-handling. A while back, a friend mentioned these "Water Panther" refurbs, and that he'd had very good results with the 12TB model. I was considering a NAS upgrade at the time, so this piqued my interest.By the time I got around to actually setting up the new NAS and ordering the drives, the 12TB were out of stock, so I went with 14TB (for slightly more money) instead. The drives I received (5 of them) were actually Western Digital DC HC530 drives. SMART data was clean; I also tested them extensively (multiple write/read passes), and they were flawless. I put them in service in my new NAS (as a ZFS RaidZ2 array), and migrated all of the data from the old NAS across without incident. They have been working great ever since.I'd say the noise level is about average for an enterprise-class HDD, which is to say, not great. If the NAS was in my office I might find it somewhat objectionable; but it is in another area of the house (the crawlspace, LOL!), so nobody needs to hear the drives seeking.Also note that there is no guarantee you will receive the exact same model of drive I did; these are refurbs, presumably whatever "Water Panther" could get their hands on. But based on my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience, and the experience of my friend, they do seem to be exercising reasonable due diligence to ensure that they only ship product that performs "like new".

I put one of these in my husband's (casual) gaming PC. It's been 13 months, and it's doing fabulous. It's no noisier than any other normal hard drive. For a cost effective space option, I have no regrets.

I've had one of these spinning for about 2 months. I've had 3 separate occasions where the disk will not lose power or experience any fatal errors, but will proceed to un-mount without warning and remain in an unusable state (fdisk shows the device, but no partitions) until the disk is powercycled. I'm requesting a replacement. Hopefully, I receive the disk within enough time to perform a 1:1 copy and still meet the return deadline. I'm fairly certain that these issues have not caused any data corruption/loss so I remain optimistic at this point.UPDATE: Tech On Tech shipped me the replacement drive overnight and had allowed me ample time to clone the data, and even perform my own tests to see if I could detect the point of failure in my strange, intermittent issue. Changed to 5 stars based on the customer service alone. I will continue to do business with this seller for the foreseeable future.

UPDATE 10/5/23: SECOND DRIVE FAILURE. Well this is starting to look shabby in regards to the quality of these drives. Over the last year or so, of the 4x drives I have purchased, 2x have now failed. I contacted Tech on Tech and they were great with their customer service, as they always are, and sent me an RMA # to receive said drive (12TB Exos X18). I really like the X18 line, and have had many in the past but herein lies a big problem with all of the RMAs: you return your drive and get what they have in stock IE it's very doubtful I'll get another X18 in exchange for my faulty X18. We'll see what happens, will update as always with results.UPDATE 9/23/23: Since ordering my first drive from this company (almost a year ago to date above) I've had one drive failure (see previous update below) which had a very fast, no hassle whatsoever turn around and of the other 3x HDDs (which are all Exos 18x 12TB HDDs, which I requested and they filled no prob) are all running perfectly without any issues.This company is reputable and reliable. They don't hassle you within the 2 year warranty period, and I can say after dealing with them through a defective drive scenario they're worth the price, 100%.I'm basically updating this review because I am back on their page ordering another 4x 18TB HDDs, that I am told (by tech on tech) have the same specs as the Seagate Exos X20 18TB drives (ST18000NM003D). I will be updating this review with my findings, as this will be my first time ordering anything other than their 12TB drives. I'm cautious this time because the seller stated that these drives "have the same specs as the ST18000NM003D drives" which I interpret as not being Seagate (who I trust as a brand, moreover the Exos line).Will update, as always, after some time with the 18TB drives.UPDATE 2/21/23: Can't say enough. Requested (2x) x18 Exos 12TB drives and thats what i got. I now have a super affordable RAID array, with quality hdd drives for my 4k movie collection. PLUS a ton of extra space for projects and games. I know ove updates this review quite a few times, but it bears repeating: these drives are quality and if, in the event you have a faulty drive (reallocations) they help you and ship the replacement asap (short the shipping I paid to get the bad drive back to them, ~$20). Overall, happy.UPDATE 2/10/23: AWESOME TECH SUPPORT/CUSTOMER SERVICE! They had a replacement drive in the mail a day after receiving the defective drive. New drive is better than the first. Very happy with this company. You take the risk buying reused enterprise drives, but for the price, im down. Ordered another 2x today to add to my RAID array. Word to the wise: always have a back up drive with everything 1:1 if youre going to play the renewed game. IMO its totally worth it for ~$10 per TB.UPDATE 2/2/23: Drive has failed with ~43000 reallocations. Sent drive back to TechonTech (at my own expense, ~$20 shipping) and am awaiting a replacement to secure my Raid array. This was not optimal, who wants a dead drive in 4 months working time but this is only one of 3 that has failed. Well see how the others hold up in time. For now im removing 2 stars. The inconvenience is a burden atm and im worried for my data that currently sits on one drive.Will Update with the resolution.Its been a few months since purchase and install. I use this HDD for media storage via torrent DLs essentially.The sound level has not been a prob at all. Via other reviews i wonder if quality varies with these, as mine is quiet as can be. Disk read/write noise is barely noticeable past what you'd expect from a mechanical drive. No clicking or buzzing etc, on my unit.Would reccomend and plan to order 3x more for server use.Update: Its been 3-4 months and the drive is still spinnin! I bought another 2 and am running a Raid array. As of now, flawless and not that noisey next to a Toshiba drive of the same age, which is a jet plane in comparison.My OG review stands, would reccomend. Though i still am curious how they vary from drive to drive sas they are refurbs. Imo, save em from the trash heap!

I ordered 4 in total for my home NAS but one drive was throwing all types of errors after about a week, went to return it to get a replacement of the same item but the seller waited out the 7 days without sending a replacement for me to send the bad one back. I buy a lot of enterprise drives throughout the year so tech on tech or whatever their name is made it to the list of companies I will no longer give my money to, found water panther has their own site and has NEW drives instead of this refurb crap. I guess this is on the item itself but it's great, when it works, just watch who's shipping it.

I use this as an backup storage device and keep it attached using a cheap USB cable. I use it all the time. I've had it for years, and I've never had any problems with it.

Windows does not handle this large a drive in default mode; when you install it Windows creates two partitions. Work-around is to use "GPR" disk type; this used the entire disk as one Windows partition.NOTE: I have not tested compatibility of this type of disk in various internal/external drives/docks; I've only tested it in two external USB docks.I like the 90-day warranty period (and low price) for a "refurbished" drive. I've done a good bit of informal stress testing, and there have been no problems. Transfer speeds are as expected (around 250+ MB/sec max, sustained speeds).

Ordered 4 of these. one of them failed short/long tests, LBA errors.All of them had S.M.A.R.T data saying 20 power-on hours. which isn't bad.We'll see how the RMA goes for the last one. There was no direct replacement option. only Refund to card (guess i have to re-order it by hand...)

The first one I ordered the package had already been opened and swapped for a Seagate 8TB drive. I returned it, at the time they were out of stock.The second one I ordered was another Seagate but at least it was 14TB this time.HOWEVER this one started showing errors within a week.There is a reason this appears to be too good to be true. It's because it is.I saw all the good reviews, it's true the up time shows not very long but the drives are erroring out.It's false advertising, these are Seagate Greens (some of the worst drives there are with the highest failure rates).