Question 1

Are these actual retail drives? I.E. 5 year warranty covered by Hitachi/HGST?

Accepted Answer

I bought from the seller goharddrive. Inquired before making the purchase for 3 4TB HGST Ultrastar, and the seller said they are new old stock. When I received the harddrive, there are obvious scratches on the body and they simply can't be new. all of them has less than a year of warranty per HGST website. Checked with the seller again and was told their so-called 5 year warranty is a sellers warranty. I also checked the SMART data, they have 0 hours on them by some numbers just didn't seem right. One of them has a spinup time of 400000ish. I looked up the sellers name and a lot of people reported this seller takes old HDD from datacenters, resets the SMART data and try to sell them as new. Returned all 3 and will never buy from them again.  Buyers be aware.

Question 2

What is the difference between 01F14688 and 01F14683?

Accepted Answer

4TB HUS724040ALE640 / 0F14683 is a 512e drive.  Which means it has 4k physical sectors with 512 emulation exposed from the hard drive firmware to the operating system.  There can be performance issues associated with sector misalignment.  Just look up "advanced format drive".  The max areal density of the 512e (emulated) is also less then the 512n (native) drive. ie. HUS724040ALA640 / 0F14688.

Max. areal density (Gbits/sq. in) 446 (512e) , 475 (512n)
Sustained transfer rate (MB/s, typical)5 171 (512e), 181 (512n)

As you can see the 512e drive is slightly slower because of this.

How to read the Ultrastar model number
HUS724040ALE640 = 4TB, SATA 6Gb/s, 
64MB buffer
H = HGST
U = Ultrastar
S = Standard
72 = 7200 RPM
40 = Full capacity — 4TB
40 = Capacity this model, 40 = 4TB
 (30 = 3TB, 20 = 2TB)
A = Generation code
L = 26.1mm z-height
E6 = Interface, SATA 6Gb/s, 512e 
 (A6 = SATA 512n, S6 = SAS 512n)
4 = 64MB buffer
0 = No encryption (1 = encryption)

I am getting the 'A6' version of the drive.  The SAS interface and performance drives from HGST (Hitachi) still don't use 512e and the max areal density is higher on these drives.  Not sure if this is because of more overhead for the 4K sectors which I don't think is the case or better binned platters for the 512N which I think is more likely.

Too bad Newegg won't let me post the link to the advanced tech spec data sheet for these drives.

Question 3

Are these brand new drives or refurbished drives or something else?

Accepted Answer

I have only purchased new drives. The price on these has fallen each time I have purchased them, however, which may make you think they are refurbished.

The drives have performed flawlessly.

Cheers,
Steve

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