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iStorage Networks Warranty

iStorage Networks Warranty

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What is “New Bulk?”

We ask suppliers the same question every day. Read below for some tips on how to choose a reputable disk drive vendor.

Avoid “New Bulk” & “New Pull” Disk Drives
“New Bulk” and “New Pull” disk drives are not new. You will never see an authorized HP, IBM, or Oracle partner selling “new bulk” disk drives. Unscrupulous vendors want you to think that OEMs charge a large premium for “Retail Factory Sealed” disk drives and offer the same product for less in “bulk” packaging. Think for a moment: Why would a vendor create a parallel market to compete with their own products?

“Bulk” products are either used or worse, factory rejected units. Unfortunately it is very easy to make used drives look like new. You should ask your supplier what firmware revision a drive has loaded and compare it to your HBA / RAID controller support matrix. If the firmware revision advertised is more than one revision behind the most current or if the vendor cannot answer the question, you should find another supplier.

TIP: You can use tools such as Seagate Seatools to read the number of power on hours on a disk drive. New drives should have less than 100 Power On Hours. We have seen “bulk” products report thousands of power on hours.
Read through this Amazon Discussion about bad customer experiences with “bulk” packaging.

End of Life Considerations
The computing industry is constantly evolving with mergers. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was acquired by Compaq in 1998, which subsequently merged with HP in 2002. IBM sold its disk drive manufacturing business to Hitachi also in 2002. (Please note we are talking about actual IBM manufactured disk drives, not disk drives built by Seagate or Hitachi for use in IBM xSeries, pSeries, and TotalStorage Products.) Maxtor was acquired by Seagate in 2006.

You simply cannot purchase “new” DEC / Compaq, Maxtor, or IBM Ultrastar disk drives ” any longer. It is best to run, not walk, away from any vendor selling parts from these manufacturers as “new bulk” or “new pulls.” If a merchant is not savvy enough about the computing industry to get product conditions correct, how can that company provide you (the customer) with quality technical support?

In short, if major distributors such as TechData, Ingram Micro, and Synnex no longer stock a product, that product cannot be sourced in “new” condition. iStorage Networks prefers to source all products from these AUTHORIZED sources. When authorized distributors no longer stock spare disks drives of a certain type, we work closely with authorized repair and refurbishing facilities to source refurbished units free of SMART trips, grown defects, and media errors.

Refurbished Parts Vendor Questions
At some point, your SAN or Server will require quality refurbished spare parts. For example, production on 15K U320 Parallel SCSI disk drives ended in December of 2011. Production of 10K U320 Parallel SCSI disk drives ended in 2007, yet thousands of servers and storage arrays still rely on these drives to perform mission critical tasks.

When buying refurbished disk drives, you should ask your vendor the following questions:

  • Are the drives you are selling refurbished or just used?
  • How are the disk drives tested?
  • How many grown defects on are the grown defect list (G-List?)
  • How many Power On Hours do the drives have? How did they determine this?
  • If you are buying large quantities of disk drives, are all the labels and firmware revisions consistent?

Vendors that cannot answer these questions intelligently are not disk drive specialists.

Ensure Vendors use Proper Packaging Materials
Disk drives are fragile precision instruments. 2″ of foam should surround disk drives, at minimum, when packaged for shipment. Some system manufacturers such as HP elect to use plastic moldings that straddle disk drives inside a box- these are acceptable as well. Disk drives must also be packaged in anti-static bags or Seagate “Seashell” plastic carriers. Under no circumstances should a disk drive be thrown in a box with just bubble wrap and packaging peanuts.

Manufacturer’s do not use retail boxes to make your purchase look “pretty”; they use the large boxes with plenty of foam as required to protect your fragile disk drive purchase.

Most “bulk” and “pull” disk drives will be packaged without foam.