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I have some external hard drives that I need to know when they were made. Approximate year is okay. Is there a way to do this easily?

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    It's usually printed on the housing of the hard drive itself. You may have to open them up though. I'm not sure if there's a way to get it through software.
    – Pylsa
    Commented Apr 12, 2015 at 22:15

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  1. Might be mentioned on the inside of the enclosure/case.

  2. Easier solution would be to check their warranty status online. If the expiry date is shown then subtracting the number of years each drive is under warranty for should give you the approximate manufacturing year.

  3. Ask the manufacturer by providing serial numbers.

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Most disks have the date of manufacture printed directly on the label. Look for any date or code that resembles a date format. Most common date formats are YYWW (Year, Week) and YYYY-MM (Year, Month).

Seagate

Some Seagate drives only have 4 or 5 digit numeric Date Code, usually found on the drive's label. The format is, YYWD or YYWWD where Y is the year, W is the week number and D is the day number. However, this can be a bit tricky to decode because Seagate uses a fiscal year for their calculation. You can read more about it in this article: Decoding Seagate Date Codes. But for a rough estimation, tools like this Seagate date code calculator will do the job.

Samsung

If the manufacturing date is not mentioned on the label, it can be decoded from the serial number of the disk. Actually this is how you can decode the manufacturing date of any Samsung product (disk, phones, TVs, washing machine, etc):

  • If the serial number is 15 digits, the 8th digit is the year and the 9th digit the month.
  • If the serial number is 11 digits, the 4th digit is the year and the 5th digit the month.

Samsung Year code:

Year Code Year Code
1990 M 2008 Q
1991 A 2009 S
1992 B 2010 Z
1993 C 2011 B
1994 D 2012 C
1995 F 2013 D
1996 G 2014 F
1997 H 2015 G
1998 J 2016 H
1999 K 2017 J
2000 N 2018 K
2001 R 2019 M
2002 T 2020 N
2003 W 2021 R
2004 X 2022 T
2005 Y 2023 W
2006 A,L 2024 X
2007 P 2025 Y

Samsung Month code:

Month Code Month Code
January 1 July 7
February 2 August 8
March 3 September 9
April 4 October A
May 5 November B
June 6 December C
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