First home NAS build: bought two used/refurbished Seagate Exos 16TB drives - diagnostics revealed some concerning results on one of them. Would you keep both for a ZFS mirror?
I'm building my first home NAS (Aoostar WTR Pro, AMD R7 5825U/16GB) with TrueNAS SCALE and recently bought two Seagate Exos 16TB drives. I ran extensive diagnostics with Victoria HDD 5.37 on a bootable USB (WinPE Sergei Strelec) on both drives before setting up the ZFS mirror pool. Here are the results, I'd appreciate the community's input.
Drive 1 — Seagate Exos X18 16TB (ST16000NM000J) Seller: Third-party seller via Amazon.es | Condition: Used – Very Good | Price: €254.99
SMART manipulation suspected: The drive arrived showing only 25 Power On Hours and 0 Reallocated Sectors. After diagnostics, it showed 25 reallocated sectors and the Head Flying Hours attribute revealed approximately 4,900 hours of actual use — strongly suggesting SMART data was reset before sale.
CrystalDiskInfo X18 after diagnostics: Health Caution, 25 Reallocated Sectors, 1 Uncorrectable Error
Full 20-hour Victoria surface scan results:
- Reallocated Sectors: 25 (was 0 on arrival)
- Unreadable sectors: 1 (at 53GB — confirmed via defects log)
- Blocks >3 seconds: 33
- Warning clusters at 123GB and 339-340GB
- Hard Disk Sentinel: Health 74%, ~998 days estimated remaining life
Victoria Defects Log:
- 1 defect: LBA 102578176 (53GB) — Timeout
- All other 16TB scanned without defects
Problems were concentrated in specific zones. Remaining ~15.6TB scanned clean at 200-290 MB/s.
Victoria HDD full scan X18 (20h 24min): 1 unreadable sector, 33 blocks >3s, 35 warnings
Hard Disk Sentinel X18: Health 74%, 25 bad sectors remapped, 1 weak sector remaining
The seller offered a 10% partial refund (~€25) as compensation, final price would be approximately €230 for the X18.
Drive 2 — Seagate Exos X16 16TB (ST16000NM002C) Condition: Factory Recertified by Seagate | Price: €350 | DOM: December 2025
X16 CrystalDiskInfo: Health Good, 0 Reallocated Sectors, 0 hours
Full 25-hour Victoria surface scan results:
- Unreadable sectors: 0 ✅
- Blocks >3 seconds: 0 ✅
- Errors: 0 ✅
- Hard Disk Sentinel: Health 100%, "The hard disk status is PERFECT"
- Speed: max 241 MB/s, avg 173 MB/s
Victoria HDD full scan X16 (25h 4min): 0 unreadable sectors, 0 errors — clean
HD Sentinel X16:Factory Recertified X16: 100% health, \"The hard disk status is PERFECT\"
My current thinking: Given current market prices for 16TB enterprise drives, I'm leaning towards accepting the 10% partial refund and keeping the X18 in the ZFS mirror alongside the X16. The redundancy of a mirror pool should mitigate the risk of the X18's known bad sectors. However, I'm open to the community's opinion before making a final decision.
My questions for the community:
- Would you use the X18 (74% health, 1 unreadable sector) in a ZFS mirror alongside the healthy X16?
- Is 10% compensation fair for a drive with manipulated SMART data sold as "Very Good"?
- Any red flags I'm missing before setting up the mirror pool?
Both drives will go into a ZFS mirror on TrueNAS SCALE if I decide to keep them both, I also have an Eaton 5E900UD UPS (900VA/480W, Line-Interactive) connected to the NAS to protect against power outages and ensure graceful shutdowns, reducing the risk of data corruption.
My home NAS setup: Aoostar WTR Pro (TrueNAS SCALE) + Eaton 5E900UD UPS
Posted May 28, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC