I see some fairly interesting prices for refurbished drives on Amazon, 35~40% cheaper than new. Example here: 16TB Seagate Exos X18 Refurbished at 166€ and New at 260€.
I am considering this option for my home NAS, running with BTRFS RAID10, plus important files are backed-up to a cloud storage, but not my media collection.
In your opinion, how risky is it to use refurbished drives ? Do you have to good or bad experience doing so ?
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It’s a gamble.
When you lose, you can simply return it.
When you win, you get a hard drive that works for really cheap.
I purchased one in 2020 that I still haven’t replaced, although I’m buying the replacement now as it has begun it’s slow certain death.
Maybe there is a way I can test the drive upon arrival, would you have some tools to recommend ? Preferably available on Linux ?
SMART tools
sudo apt-get install smartmontools
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdX where sdX is your drive in question (sdA, sdB, etc).
| grep Power_On_Hours
| grep Power_Cycle_Count
This just tells you how much that drive was used in the past, It’s not a perfect to test but it’s what I do 🤷♂️
Comment save ! Thank you :)
Also run a health test on it. It’s less important for SSDs IMO, but it’s great for HDDs to check if there’s any obvious issues.
Purely anecdotal but I tend to avoid any sensitive hardware purchases off of Amazon because they suck at packaging things a lot of times and I’ve had more than a few DOA components because they just tossed the box into an even larger box then apparently yeeted it down a flight of stairs
Edit: I should add that I live 10 minutes from a Microcenter which plays a large part in my overall pickiness, but that said, when I’m looking for something sensitive to handling and needs to be purchased online I stick to computer hardware retailers solely because they love packing peanuts and bubble wrap as much as the components love them
a lot of amazon sellers simply mark working pulls as “refubrished” when all they did was reformat or if you are lucky did a zero fill and check that the sectors weren’t bad.
I don’t trust reburbs that aren’t manufacturer refurbished on any site because its a huge difference in the testing and checking being done.
I do sometimes buy used drives, but I know what I am getting there vs “refurbished” - and there is usually a pricing difference which is why so many are dishonestly calling used drives refurbs.
you want to look at the sellers warranty policies. if if they actually have one besides amazons, the seller is confident in their own items longevity
Depends.
If it’s “buy from Amazon” then you can return it with no issue if shits bad.
If Amazon is just the middleman, than the seller could be scamming and will either fight returns or just close up shop. I wouldn’t buy any used electronic over $200 from a middle man because of that, so this is kind of on the line.
But modern HDDs hold up a lot better than they used to. I tend to “ship of Theseus” PC builds and I’ve got some HDDs probably 15 years old that are still going strong.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard anyone say a HDD failed. Just people remembering what it was like 25 years ago. We don’t think of innovation with old tech like HDDs, but there’s been a lot of improvements to the parts that used to fail regularly.
Exos x18 are enterprise drives that came out last than 5 years ago, I can’t imagine they were replaced because they’re all bad, just companies upgrading to newer tech. So should be fine and last you well over a decade.
I see offers from both “Amazon Renewed store” and “Seagate store”.
The HDDs I currently have in my NAS are a mix match of 6TB drive from different brands they all are 4+yo and they all have worked without issues so far, even though some are SMR. It’s running 24/7 but it’s not a very intense workload. I will need some capacity upgrade soon but I don’t feel like investing 1000+€ 😅
Direct from Seagate wouldn’t be bad, check their store first to see if you can cut out Amazon.
I was talking about random reseller stores. “Manufacturer refurbished” for things you can’t see is almost always a good idea. The manufacturer has their brand name on the line and usually go over common fail points and replace if it looks worn.
Stores/Amazon doing “renewed” means they tried to cover up superficial damage and is completely different. It might look ok on the outside and be complete junk on the inside.
Think of “renewed” as “open box returns” except it might have taken the last user 5 years to return. It’s a much worse gamble.
Like others, I’ve had good experiences with eBay- just look for reputable sellers (good reviews, not a brand new seller, etc). Most of what I bought was fine, but the ones that were dead on arrival I was able to get replaced within their warranty window. Just be sure to test what you get as soon as it arrives.
I’ve had good luck with goharddrive.com. They sell through amazon as well, but I believe they ship direct. I usually get the hgst, or now wd, ultrastar hard drives. I’ve had zero issues.
I’d rather just shuck external HDD than buy refurbs
