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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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Why is it bad to buy used hard drives and SSDs? (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by seemorelight@alien.top to c/datahoarder@selfhosted.forum

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[–] bryku@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

I think the biggest problem is that you don't know what you are really getting.

Mechanical drives do wear down over time, but you can get a solid 5+ years of use out of them. However, SSDs are much worse. They have a specific number of writes and they will start failing. This means... if it was used in data center as cashing or temporary memory... that drive is TOASTED!

The next problem is that... people who sell the most drives are typically those who use them the most. A small data center, school, company, and so on. They are the ones who have 50+ drives to replace and often times they will sell the old ones. This means you are far more likely to get a drive that has more ware on it than one that doesn't.

There are some things you can do if you are dead set on buying a used drive.

Mechanical Drives - Mechanical Drives typically last longer than SSDs and they are normally cheaper so you are out less money in the worse case situation.
John Doe - Buy from someone local as they are less likely to have heavily used that drive.
Photo - Ask for a photo of the drive. If the drive was made in 2001 it probably has some extra wear and tear. This also allows you to double check that the drive and post is the same. Some of these companies will have a random receptionist make the ebay post who might not know anything about a harddrive and could unintentionally use wrong information misleading you.