How to identify the Manufacturing Date of an Apple HDD?

Most if not all the internal hard disk drives used in Macs will have a label bearing a manufacturing date. Unless Hitachi has a searchable database correlating its serial number to a manufacturing date (and I don't know of any) then there is no other way to determine that information. I suppose you could contact them and ask.

Welcome!

I know of no drive maker who publishes lists of serial numbers v. dates.

The "HT" in the model is Hitachi. You could inquire of Hitachi but that's about all.

The fact the the drive's ID is in this format:

APPLE HDD HTS541010A9E632

indicates that this is a factory-installed (original equipment) drive, so it should have been made in a year ± of the Mac's model year, from about this Mac..." Were it a replacement, " APPLE" would be missing from the description.

"54" suggests this is a 5400-rpm drive.

You can also plug the model number HTS541010A9E632 into a search engine and see what shows up.

Were there a problem with the computer that brought you here, if you post details we may be able to give your further assistance. If this is the Mac Mini running macOS 10.15 shown in your equipment profile, we can get you moved to the dedicated Mini forums where your will get many more views.

FrankPerry wrote:

How do I access the Mini forums you mentioned?

Mac Mini forums are here:

Mac mini

However, don't repost; I can ask the Mods to move this entire thread there intact.

Apple hides the very useful forum section site map. Here it is:

Site Map - Apple Community

You may wish to bookmark it because otherwise it is buried three levels deep. ⚒

FrankPerry wrote:

Yes, this concerns my 2012 Mac mini (macOS 10.15.7).

I had to replace the original HDD with another used Apple HDD I purchased.

It's water under the bridge now, but replacing the original HDD with a 2.5" SSD, would have breathed new life into your 2012 Mac mini. The Write/Read speed would have jumped 5 times from around 100MB/s to around 500MB/s.

After installing and configuring the used HDD, I realized that I forgot to make note of the manufacturing date of the "replacement" Apple HDD.

I really don't want to dissemble the Mac mini again, just to record the date on the drive.

The date of the used HDD doesn't matter as much, as how much it was used in its previous life.

Personally I wouldn't get too worried about it and would consider replacing the HDD with a 1T SSD.