So I recently built a new PC to use as a NAS. I have everything setup and was working on getting everything up and running but ran into some drive issues. I ordered two 20TB Seagate Exos from Newegg, which is apparently already a red flag after doing some searching. One came dead, it isn’t recognized either by my NAS system or another PC I tried plugging it into, and the other is currently working but seems to be throwing a lot of errors.
I noticed initially that I was getting some alerts on the web interface. I can’t seem to include an image or a link to the alerts but yesterday I was getting “47 current unreadable sectors (Pending)” and “47 offline uncorrectable sectors”. The most recent ones this morning say 39 instead of 47.
I tried running some SMART tests as well and the short one I ran passed, but the two long ones failed with 90% remaining. See below for the output of smartctl.
root@truenas[~]# smartctl -a /dev/ada0
smartctl 7.2 2021-09-14 r5236 [FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p9 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: ST20000NM007D-3DJ103
Serial Number: ZVT6M5F3
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 0e5fc8ae7
Firmware Version: SN01
User Capacity: 20,000,588,955,648 bytes [20.0 TB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: ACS-4 (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is: SATA 3.3, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Sun Mar 2 08:09:34 2025 PST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 121) The previous self-test completed having
the read element of the test failed.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 559) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: (1692) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x70bd) SCT Status supported.
SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 080 068 044 Pre-fail Always - 99701864
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 091 091 000 Pre-fail Always - 0
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 13
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 173
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 100 253 045 Pre-fail Always - 222572
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 15
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 13
18 Unknown_Attribute 0x000b 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
188 Command_Timeout 0x0032 100 097 000 Old_age Always - 12885098499
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 069 063 000 Old_age Always - 31 (Min/Max 25/33)
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 3
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 103
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 031 040 000 Old_age Always - 31 (0 25 0 0 0)
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 40
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 40
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 1
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0023 100 100 001 Pre-fail Always - 0
240 Head_Flying_Hours 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 10 (51 61 0)
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 343787236
242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 55992
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 15 171957856
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 15 -
# 3 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 12 171957856
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
I’ve already started the process of returning the dead drive, but I wanted to see what everyone here has to say about these results. They seem bad to me but I’m new to this.
My additional question is, if I return these two drives, how to proceed after that? Seagate does have some reputation issues, but I think I was also the victim of Newegg’s selling practice. These drives don’t have the full 5 year warranty after looking them up on Seagate’s site, and they were also shipped in a similar way to what I’ve been seeing when searching, just the drives themselves without much of any packaging or padding. I have the dead drive sitting next to me and it has some visible dents as well, which is another sign.
Is it just a case of needing to buy from a more reputable seller to get actual new drives that are competently shipped, or is it worth trying to buy from another brand?