Seagate Exos x12 12TB SATA 6Gb/s 256MB Cache Enterprise Hard Drive 3.5in (ST12000NM0007) (Renewed)

Initial review is that the drives are in great condition physically, read without issues first try, and write and read data at speeds I would expect.I ordered 2 drives to make a simple cloud server for my household, nothing special, no RAID or anything as our data isn’t that valuable and very valuable data is backed up separately elsewhere.Physically they look brand new, there was one scratch on the bottom of one drive, but it’s barely noticeable and cosmetic only. It appears to be atop the new label as well so it likely happened in packaging prior to shipment because they were very well packaged, unlikely to happen while in transit.Ease of installation, they’re standard 3.5 in HDDs, plug and play, easy as can be.Noise is not bad at all. I have them in a simple open dock, and they make occasional light noise, but nothing loud or concerning. If you have the drives in a closed enclosure like a NAS system or drive bay for a server, the fans will likely be louder than your drives.Space is great. 12TB for the price is fantastic and the speed is fast enough to run my in house cloud storage server and read data quickly for my Plex media data.Warranty, they have it listed as under a 5 year warranty where is the drive fails due to normal use in that time they claim they’ll replace it for free. I cannot verify if this is true but it is at least written.Take all of this with a grain of salt. This is my first impressions of these drives and I plan to update my review if anything changes. Just know if you don’t see an update after a few months that my initial opinions have held true.

Have had these installed in a mini server in my living room since about Jan of 2024. 12 months later I have to say I am truly impressed with the quality of these. I have had no problems with functionality and they have been reliable so far, although if anything were to happen you have a fantastically long warranty to handle issues. I have to say with the fact that these are physical hard disks the write speed of them seems to be next level even over a wifi connection to my server, I have never plugged in but i've managed to move 50GB of files in less than 10 mins. Installation was simple, they screwed right in and have plenty of mount points to seemingly fit in any device. My biggest complaint is noise levels, while these have an amazing storage capacity and are allowing me to back up all my devices in the house, you will NEVER not hear them when they're working. I did some research as originally I thought the drives were failing and according to several sites, larger drives with multiple plates just tend to be loud and considering how many devices this is backing up, I really am willing to accept that. It will live in a less open space when I move and this won't be a problem, just be aware silence isn't their vibe, granted I bought two at the same time and they're in the same server so it's also like doubling up on the scenario

Been buying many of these 12tb used drives, haven't had any failures (but ofc leave cold spares and run these with a Parity system). Way more economic (cheaper per TB) than buying new (larger or smaller drives)

I have 4 NAS's. To avoid typing for hours, they all have Iron Wolf or EXOS hard drives. So, I swapped stuff around and now the Terramaster has 4 each 6 tb iron Wolf's, the Asustor 2 bay has 2 each 14 tb (used) EXOS's, the Asustor 4 bay has 4 each (used) EXOS 12 TB X18's. (These drives I just got are X12; basically meaning they're just older). So, the Synology got these drives. These drives are used, too, of course.To veer off-topic for a moment, I like the Terramaster some, the Synology a lot, and the two Asustors COMPLETELY the most because they have 2.5 gb Ethernet ports and they're faaast.These drives got here at about 1:30 today. I took them out of the box, laid them on something soft, and watched TV for a couple hours as they warmed up. PERFECTLY packed and not a scratch on them.It's now 5:30, they've been in the Synology, which is creating an SHR1 (RAID), closing in on 7% done. It's going to be 31.4 TB with single drive fail tolerance. So, while that's been going on, I had to download and install the Synology DSM 7.2.1 again because I'd swapped all 4 drives out of it. I took a look at the drives. Two of them had ~22,000 hours on them (I didn't write it down) and the other two had ~34,000 hours and just under 35,000 hours on them. I think the MTBF's on these drives is 1,200,000 hours. I am very, VERY confident that these drives have never been abused or mishandled in any way, from the way they look and the way they were packaged. As for the packaging, I'm sure you could throw that package as hard as you could and have it hit anything, including the ground, and the drives would suffer no damage. The package, of course, would be damaged, but likely not the drives. That well packaged.They are playing super nice with the Synology, by the way. Not a single error, problem, or snag. The Synology loves them and they love the Synology!Supposedly, they're helium filled, I've read, meaning they're more energy efficient and run cooler than Iron Wolf's.What I want to know is what else are you possibly going to buy for a hundred bucks that will beat these??? Every once in awhile, you can find steals like this on EXOS NAS hdd's on Amazon. Of all the NAS drives, Iron Wolf's and EXOS', I have yet to buy one that isn't perfect!P.S: I also have some leftover 2 tb, 4 tb, 2 each 10 tb Iron Wolf hdd's left over. They're either going to be in storage or in a killer computer I'm building. My point is that all those are still in perfect condition, too!Who's throwing away all these perfectly good hard drives?!? Anyway, to do better, you'll have to get SSD's, meaning you'll have to wait 15-10-20 years or pay through the nose.P.P.S: Now the SHR is 9.5% done since I've been typing.

Needed to add some storage to my Synology NAS and these were available at a fair price. They arrived in great condition, SMART tests showed everything was good to go. I installed them and rebuilt the RAID without issue.They work. They don't seem to get overly hot. However, compared to my IronWolf drives these are replacing, they're noisy little things. Sounds like I have a constipated baby in my tech corner most of the day.I definitely wouldn't want to sit next to it all day, but since my NAS sits outside my office on its own rack, it's not a deal breaker.