Recertified hard drive testing

[shawn]

I recently purchased a few recertified hard drives on eBay and I have checked the SMART status and performed a writing surface test using HDS. I chose not to perform an initialized surface test as it tends to be much slower compared to the writing test.

I observed that the SMART data on these recertified hard drives were all factory reset, and there was no recorded history of writing activity, temperature, or power-on time.

My question is, if both the SMART status and the writing test indicate good results, should I be concerned about the fact that these drives are recertified? Are they just as reliable as new drives?

[hdsentinel]

If the recommended disk tests at

Support -> Frequently Asked Questions -> Hard disk health is low or recently changed or I just installed a new (used) hard disk. How can I perform a deep analysis?
( https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests )

show no errors, then yes, the drive can be used without problems.

Maybe you can check Disk menu -> Device Specific Information too, it attempts to detect and display additional status/statistics information, can give some additional details.

[shawn]

1. I have attached the results from the 'Disk' menu under 'Device Specific Information.'
2. All drives have passed the SMART and Write tests.
3. Something interesting is happening: the motherboard shows the port as 'empty' in BIOS, but once I boot into Windows 11, both the operating system and HDS can detect the drives. The motherboard is quite old though (Gigabyte B75M-D3H). Is this normal?

[hdsentinel]

Thanks, I see.

Yes, this is normal: the BIOS of old motherboards may not able to recognise high capacity hard disk drives. Then the drive(s) not detected during the boot stage (so it is not possible to boot from that drive) but yes, when Windows loads and the appropriate drivers started, the drive(s) can be used without problems.

[shawn]

What value should I check in the "Device Specific Information"?
Because of the fact that I cannot see any errors in SMART, WRITE testing and "Device Specific Information", can I assume these re-certified HDDs are as good as new now?

[hdsentinel]

Generally the Overview page is the most important: the text description and the Health % should be enough, so you'd only need to look on the S.M.A.R.T. page and the Device Specific Information page ONLY if really required, if you're curious about additional details, statistics, internal error logs, any previous self-test results (if started).

The most important information on the Device Specific Information page are

Last error (hour) : Never
Error free hours : 25 (1 days, 1 hours)

as it confirms that no error recorded by the drive in its lifetime, based on the internal error logs: as you may noticed,

Device error count : 0

so yes, you can assume these re-certified HDDs are as good as new now.

[shawn]

Thank you for your reply!
Now I can sleep tight!