If the outside of a new purchased internal drive looks worn, could it be an older refurbished drive? Seagate 1.5 tb barracuda.

Was the box shrink wrapped? If so that might just be the style of the drives now.

I work more with western digital than seagate so someone with this might have a better response.

Hopefully it has a hardware warranty. I have never personally seen one of the drives, but I guess you could try checking the documents that came with it to see if there is any guarantee of it being brand new. If it does fail, then hopefully they will be nice to you when you call them.

Check Microcenter’s return policy. I worked at Best buy for a while, and you could return most things within 14 days for no other reason than you didn’t like it, so cosmetic defects would probably do it. You might want to exchange it just in case.

Yeah, it was shrink wrapped, package as new, etc. It has a warranty for sure and it is covered by 30 days at microcenter. It seems to be working fine but I just want to know whether the drive is supposed to look like that or not. Are the casings for internal hard drives usually smooth to the touch? I’m just wondering whether they pulled a fast one and gave me a refurb. I don’t really want to put it out and return it and find out it’s just the style.

Hard drive casings are typically smooth. When you say rough, are you saying the overall texture of the casing is rough, or there are visible dings and dents in the metal? It’s not uncommon for retailers to sell a refurb product as new without the buyer knowing. Also, a previous customer may have bought a new drive, returned their dented one, and the retailer just put it back in stock without checking. I would check the part number on the drive and make sure its the part number on the box and not an older model. ...Of course it could just be a new drive with a dent ;)

If it really is one of the drives with the faulty firmware-then don’t worry. Just flash it to the latest version.

The outside of the HD should be smooth BTW.

Well, they assured me it was the latest firmware and I new about the issue with it. My issue was with the appearence- I just wanted to know if it was a refurb. I think Seagate may have packages them as refurbs because they had so many problems with the firmware. Anyway I guess it’s not a big deal. It’s not like obviously dented- it looks like it somehow has a rough hewn aestetic. I’m not sure how you could create that dinging it up- no obvious dents, just like the metal is rough.