I admit they were way too cheap for what they are (like 15% cheaper than same-size Ironwolf), so I gambled it haha there were no indications that these drives were OEM or similar.
Back to issue at hand: since I can’t personally have the five years warranty on these, only the original purchaser can, and I have no way to know who they are and when they bought them, I should just return them, right? And maybe buy the next ones only from authorized sellers?
edit: also, now that I think about it, and before I make the same mistake twice, there’s no way I can get enterprise drives as a normal consumer, can I, at least not brand new? I expect any enterprise drives I can find will have the same issue, i.e. bought by someone else for servers or similar, and then resold, correct?
edit 2: actually WD sells enterprise drives on their website, so my previous assumption about it was wrong
Chances are enterprise drives will last far longer than 5 years easily in my experience, but in my opinion 15% off isn’t enough to justify not having a warranty. I see those sales often enough on legitimate drives.
Enterprise drive sales aren’t restricted in anyway, you just need to buy them from a reputable seller. I personally would avoid Amazon, there are tons of “deals” like the one you found on there and they don’t make it obvious. A legitimate seller example - https://www.connection.com/product/seagate-8tb-exos-7e10-sata-6gb-s-512e-4kn-fastformat-3.5-internal-hard-drive/st8000nm017b/41308811?cac=Result