One Billion Drive Hours and Counting: Q1 2016 Hard Drive Stats
Since we're on the subject of hard drives, I hope this will be helpful or interesting:<p>It has been our experience that it is no longer possible to buy new, non-fraudulant drives of <i>a sort of recent, but not brand new</i> drive model from Amazon.<p>So, for instance, in early 2016 if you want to buy 4TB enterprise drives from Amazon, you will find them, they will be classified as brand new, and they will be sold by some big amazon parts seller.<p>When you receive them they will be nice and shiny brand new wrapped - perfectly sealed - and when you spin them up, SMART stats will show 4000-6000 hours of use and that they are 2-3 years old.<p>This is almost universal and has been happening for at least 3-4 years.  These sellers are selling the drives as brand new and they are anything but.  When you complain, they will immediately exchange or refund - there's never a hassle there - and once in a while the seller will spout some bullshit about the drives being "new pulls" ... that is, drives they stripped from unsold servers/desktops.<p>Hope that helps.