Wow even after they treated you so badly you would still go back to Synapse? Maybe thats why they treated customers so badly in the first place.

There are plenty other NAS brands.

did u run the seagate farm check to confirm if it's truly brand new or used?

https://github.com/TheRealDevKat/farm-check

For the record i bought 1 seagate ironwolf exos X18 (st12000nm000j) from curated shop. I ran the app i mentioned and did confirm it is brand new and not a second hand (their store do sell second hand but they say it label clearly new or used accordingly). I talked to seller before purchase to confirm that the exos i got was a x18 and not the notoriously bad exos x12. So for that he was telling the truth because i verified what i received.

also note that store mentions it is store warranty only. meaning, you cannot claim warranty direct from seagate for drives purchased from his store.

so far so good right? but then i saw someone here in the lowyat forum who mentioned warranty issue when put to the test....

they claimed that when they ask for warranty replacement, they ignored them. This is a red flag and i would steer clear from them. donno how shopee allows such stores to operate on their platform. This is the main reason i don't purchase from this store anymore. What good is it if your warranty for replacement if drive die (even if it's legit original and unused) but is not valid?

I've had a headache trying to settle warranty dispute with a DIFFERENT seller before which i proved was a scam. Shopee only refunded 1 drive. but the other 3 they refused. as such i would not recommend anyone buying from a store where the warranty is in doubt

you typically won't find out a drive is gonna drop dead if you didn't run the gamestrailer farm check to confirm, until after using for a few months even a 1 year, before it dies. this is the scam, by then u want to ask for warranty they lie, and you try get help from shopee, their excuse the money was long time released so they can't do anything and won't help. so DO NOT count on shopee for hard drive warranty, they are totally useless and unhelpful. doesn't even matter if store lied about their warranty policy, shopee doesn't care and won't help you get your money back.

i've bought original legit seagate ironwolves in the past that failed and managed to claim warranty before on a couple of occasions. so even if it's original and unused, doesn't mean it's 100% won't fail during the 3-5 year warranty period. so i wouldn't take it for granted unless you like to gamble



as such, i can only in good conscience recommend hard drive purchase from viewnet. this is where i bought my recent hard drive for seagate ironwolf. so i'm not spouting some bs, i'm putting my own wallet where my mouth is. If you want to haggle cheaper price, go to their physical store, can get 100-200 cheaper than the shopee price. if too lazy, just buy shopee and hopefully use a coupon or buy during the sales events ONLY.

https://www.viewnet.com.my/

*viewnet flagship store
https://shopee.com.my/shop/92746975


If you go to their website they also got a website and email contact. I verified it myself so it's legit. i ask for discount before i go to their physical store. can also use that as reference if later u drive store then say u already haggled to buy at that price, so u dont waste time drive there then find out price not what u expected


they are also a confirmed/verified seagate approved reseller, meaning if you purchase from them, you won't have issue when claiming for RMA, also you don't have to worry if it's new or not (i would still check regardless of course)

you can also check czone if you want, but when i ask for price it was more expensive than viewnet



So i've tried

- WD RED non pro (the non plus. but it is CMR so it wasn't the smr fiasco)
- Seagate Ironwolf non pro
- Seagate Exos X12 (worse hard drive ever... don't buy. anyone who tries to sell you this is a scammer)
- Seagate Exos X18 (doesn't have the failure rate issues hanging over it's head compared to X12, so is considered a safe purchase. Newest version of exos cost a bomb, so at minimum, get X18 but not any lower)


Going forward for home nas use, i'll probably get either a Seagate Ironwolf non pro or a wd red plus depending on the price. I use 4 drives in my nas, so for performance i need the specs to be the same.

Warranty seagate is the best (better if u dont have to claim warranty. i've rarely or at all needed to warranty for wd red drive, so maybe that is a testament their hdds are less likely to fail?)

wd warranty haven't tried yet, but i heard the shipping not free unlike seagate?

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Feb 13 2026, 09:16 AM

Thx for sharing, I think I dodge the bullet.

Luckily the battery I get from Taobao exceed my expectation, very good quality the iPad battery last very long.
The seller triple confirm the BMS chip is using texas instrument chip not generic garbage chip, that's why their battery better than generic no brand one.

I was looking for a specific sataII hdd to repair existing raid i.e. 12+ years old
Was scouring online for days but can only find at ebay, amazon and sysnapse i.e. confirmed model number.
Later I buy from shopee because some customers happens to post photo, and I saw the model number from there.
Risky but paid off

Sysnapse sell rare, old, odd stuff and clearly showing model/part number info.
Items could be refurbished but I think very low chance for it to be fakes.
There are many business keep using IT equipments despite already end of support life/no maintenance contract.
If I am looking for sparepart to repair these, I will still deal with them or similar local vendor with a physical office, rather than random shopee seller
i.e. non personal use, corporate level

Wow, didnt know there is a tool to check for refurbished hdd for seagate. Is there a similar tool for western digital?

Yup. Bought a batch of bad seagate from czone. But czone only warranty 3y, and charge runner fee rm15.
Then 5th year another hdd dead. I checked their warranty S/N database turns out still valid.
So, I try claim warranty myself and went to seagate support center. Was successful. Even saved that rm15

I build some raid group for personal use with x5 western digital raid edition model wd5003abyz. Super durable, first faulty disk at 13th year.

actually the github link apparently the link changed, i assume the dev changed his nick. i honestly don't know whats up with that, i only mention it so you can have some caution. too many malware on github.

that said, before the github nick change, that was the app i used to verify. i self host on truenas docker, i run it, then it outputs the stats in shell. by comparing the seagate farm power on hours VS the smart power on hours, i can look for discrepancy.

When i checked, both were 0 and with no diffence between the 2 values. meaning it was indeed brand new when i got mine. Even if it was a mismatch, if the difference is minor, that is still ok. But a fake drive in past the difference was 4 years.... that is definitely tampered smart where a hdd was used for 4 years and someone reset it back to 0 to fake that it's brand new. thats how you use this docker container app to look for sus stuff like that

yes i also checked the s/n for the hdd i bought from that store, it checked out. but the seller cautioned that despite that, the warranty is only store warranty.

the drive hasn't died yet, and it did check out as brand new. and it was rm500 cheaper than my recent purchase of a seagate ironwolf non pro 12tb.

that said, i rather buy from viewnet or other similarly validated seagate reseller so i don't have to guess whether rma will be covered or not by seagate rma. i take no chances these days

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Feb 13 2026, 08:01 PM

Czone & Viewnet (along with Thundermatch & AllIT) are the OG otais in Lowyat for many decades so no worries on hardware being ori & brand new unless their staff are playing hanky (swapping customer parts) w/o their knowledge or perhaps their distro channels are releasing refurbs to resellers as new (unlikely but who knows).

for those shops in particular, strongly doubt that.

worse case for them is the prices. is it just me or does shops in malaysia tend to hike past msrp. like how is it that even if drive say made in malaysia or thailand, yet the prices is way more than amazon.com why is that?






there was talk of increased ssd nand prices, but apparently hdd too was affected by 46% + price increaase




https://www.techpowerup.com/345260/hdd-pric...ast-four-months

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Feb 14 2026, 04:41 AM

https://pricepergig.com

The managers dont really monitor their front staffs, janji ada sales. Sometimes when staff goes behind or go somewhere to get stock who knows what happens. Its only when got customer complain then they know that person was frauding the company & customers.

Nope. Didn't check. It is still working now.

I ban WD since they takeover Hitachi's HDD division. I have beef with HGST. They don't honor warranty on a type of glue that came out of HDD. And no, I did not try to modify it. WD's warranty isn't great as well. Took them a month to settle my WD Green. Seagate usually only 1 week. 4 days is record speed.

This post has been edited by TristanX: Feb 14 2026, 11:40 AM

funny you mention that.

1 of my hgst died, so i tried to claim warranty. wd bought over hgst so the warranty switched over to them.

but the hitch was, i had bought from ebay which was sourced from italy region. so i could not claim warranty. my first lesson to source local

hm... that's weird cause my seagates took at least 3-4 weeks before i got the replacement. maybe i'm just unlucky but i did do rma a couple of times before.

the only saving grace, as long as it was original and from proper seller, the rma went without issue. and i didn't have to pay for rma delivery especially opt for them to come collect (they sent one big truck just for me ) or you drive yourself to their drop off point.

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Feb 14 2026, 03:40 PM

You can deal with Seagate directly for local stock. Much faster than going through the distributor or seller.

r u talking about seagate shopee?



oo bad news



https://wccftech.com/western-digital-has-no...acity-left-out/



oof

Yeah, I took the risk from the curator shop and it paid off. HDD still alive. Lucky.

i bought 1 to test the waters. didn't buy more after someone who posted on this forum this sub thread i believe somewhere, that they don't truly honor their store warranty i just share in case u weren't aware.

that said that was 1 user who said this. dont know if anyone else can also verify this as well.