Advice on buying used harddisks?

[ArcticApe]

Hello!

I know the correct answer to this is probably "dont.", but I have someone on my countries version of ebay/craigslist selling harddisks at a value of 4.62 USD per terrabyte. I've requested a SMART reading, but what else should I be looking out for?
They're 4TB WD Re WD4000FYYZ

Edited September 2, 2022 by ArcticApe
Included model

[da na]

Just SMART. I'd recommend don't buy Seagates. Just older WD, or best, HGST.

[ArcticApe]

10 minutes ago, Mel0n. said:

Just SMART. I'd recommend don't buy Seagates. Just older WD, or best, HGST.

They're WD Re, WD4000FYZZ

[RONOTHAN##]

8 minutes ago, ArcticApe said:

I know the correct answer to this is probably "dont.",

That is the correct answer if you care about your data at all, even for the price of those drives. Hard drives have an average life span of about 5 years, give or take depending on the specific models and everything. Given that these are used drives, a majority of that life span has probably been used up and they're going to give the ghost sooner rather than later. 

 

10 minutes ago, ArcticApe said:

've requested a SMART reading, but what else should I be looking out for?

Look at the power on time maybe from the SMART data (assuming they don't just send you a pass/fail message), that should tell you how long the drive has been in service roughly. If these are practically new drives it might be worth considering, but if they're not brand new I would say that the $50-100 you might save isn't worth the cost of data recovery or just having the drives die after a couple months. 

 

Personally, every used drive I've bought (I regularly part out used rigs on Craigslist) has died within a year. I wholeheartedly recommend used parts for basically everything else in a system, my main rig is at least half used parts, but drives are the one thing I cannot in good faith recommend buying used. It's not like a motherboard where if it dies, you've got the annoying task of replacing it, you've also got to hope that you didn't have anything on that drive that you cared about or else you've got a backup or are willing to spend the exorbitant amount of money at a data recovery specialist to get the data back. 

 

If this is just for a Steam library or other data that is cloud backed up, then it can maybe make sense if you're willing to gamble on the life span (I do have drives that are over 10 years old that still work, I've also got drives that have died after about a year of use even new), but personally given that the lifespan of drives is so volatile I wouldn't take the risk. 

[AbydosOne]

1 minute ago, ArcticApe said:

They're WD Re, WD4000FYZZ

Those are a decade old at this point... Unless you put them in a (very) redundant array, I wouldn't bother.

[thekingofmonks]

If you can, ask for the total run time and startup count (from crystaldiskinfo). This way you'll know if it was used for long periods of time without being shut down, such as in the case of a server or a chia miner.

[ArcticApe]

1 hour ago, thekingofmonks said:

If you can, ask for the total run time and startup count (from crystaldiskinfo). This way you'll know if it was used for long periods of time without being shut down, such as in the case of a server or a chia miner.

52000 hours, probably not gonna bother with it. lol

[ArcticApe]

I have an offer to buy some 4TB Harddisks at a very cheap price, but one has ran for 52k hours with 24 startups, the other at 17k hours. The disks are rated for 2 million hours but that probably isnt reasonable is it?

[RONOTHAN##]

19 minutes ago, NastyFlytrap said:

The idea that ssd's last longer than hard drives nowadays is just utterly moronic and i have no clue what those people are smoking.

Never had an SSD die (granted, most of the SSDs I own are back from the OG days of the SLC drives where with typical desktop use they'll outlive the sun), and I have a pile of HDDs sitting in a corner waiting to be drilled that have died after about 5 years of average desktop use. That's where I'm coming from, and where most people I know come from as well. 

 

Hard drives can last a while. Most of the time they don't. 

[Donut417]

50 minutes ago, NastyFlytrap said:

according to a lot of people on this forum, HDD's die in like 4 years or so. 

The average life span of a consumer grade hard disk is 5 to 7 years. That’s just an “average”. Doesn’t mean the drive will die, just means at that age it’s a may pop. I have drives that are old and still in use. It comes down to a lot of factors and how the drives were used and what kind of usage they were designed for. 

[Skiiwee29]

@ArcticApe I have merged your threads together. Please keep similar/same topics to a single thread. 

[ArcticApe]

5 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

That is the correct answer if you care about your data at all, even for the price of those drives. Hard drives have an average life span of about 5 years, give or take depending on the specific models and everything. Given that these are used drives, a majority of that life span has probably been used up and they're going to give the ghost sooner rather than later. 

 

Look at the power on time maybe from the SMART data (assuming they don't just send you a pass/fail message), that should tell you how long the drive has been in service roughly. If these are practically new drives it might be worth considering, but if they're not brand new I would say that the $50-100 you might save isn't worth the cost of data recovery or just having the drives die after a couple months. 

 

Personally, every used drive I've bought (I regularly part out used rigs on Craigslist) has died within a year. I wholeheartedly recommend used parts for basically everything else in a system, my main rig is at least half used parts, but drives are the one thing I cannot in good faith recommend buying used. It's not like a motherboard where if it dies, you've got the annoying task of replacing it, you've also got to hope that you didn't have anything on that drive that you cared about or else you've got a backup or are willing to spend the exorbitant amount of money at a data recovery specialist to get the data back. 

 

If this is just for a Steam library or other data that is cloud backed up, then it can maybe make sense if you're willing to gamble on the life span (I do have drives that are over 10 years old that still work, I've also got drives that have died after about a year of use even new), but personally given that the lifespan of drives is so volatile I wouldn't take the risk. 

Heres the SMART; seems like a big gamble lmao. The other ones that were selling had 53k hours

[AbydosOne]

1 minute ago, ArcticApe said:

You need to actually copy/paste the image, not link to it (because we're not logged into whatever account it was sent to, so it just 401s for us).

[ArcticApe]

1 minute ago, AbydosOne said:

You need to actually copy/paste the image, not link to it (because we're not logged into whatever account it was sent to, so it just 401s for us).

did copy paste it, strange. Does it show now?

[RONOTHAN##]

11 minutes ago, ArcticApe said:

Heres the SMART; seems like a big gamble lmao. The other ones that were selling had 53k hours

The reallocate sectors number would make me a bit nervous. I wouldn't touch it

[Blue4130]

54 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The reallocate sectors number would make me a bit nervous. I wouldn't touch it

? Zero. That's good. 

[RONOTHAN##]

21 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

? Zero. That's good. 

Where'd you get zero from? The current reported value is 200

[Blue4130]

6 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Where'd you get zero from? The current reported value is 200

Current value column is on the right side. Check the power on hours. 

[ArcticApe]

10 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The reallocate sectors number would make me a bit nervous. I wouldn't touch it

How come? As far as I could understand from reading about SMART, the raw value (far right) is at 0, which is ideal.

[RONOTHAN##]

39 minutes ago, ArcticApe said:

How come? As far as I could understand from reading about SMART, the raw value (far right) is at 0, which is ideal.

Forgot for that one you've got to read the raw value and that the current value reading (what I was basing my logic on) was broken. 

 

I still wouldn't touch the drive since it is definitely been used a little too much for my liking, but it's probably still in usable shape. Just because it isn't throwing SMART errors doesn't mean it won't die soon, it just means it's not showing signs of death. 

[Blue4130]

19 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

 

 

I still wouldn't touch the drive since it is definitely been used a little too much for my liking, but it's probably still in usable shape. Just because it isn't throwing SMART errors doesn't mean it won't die soon, it just means it's not showing signs of death. 

While I agree with you and wouldn't buy it, this is a schrodinger's cat situation. It's not showing signs of death, it could die tomrrow or it could last another 18k hours or more.

[xAcid9]

2 things I usually check when buying used HDD.

SMART and seq speed. 

 

Sometime a HDD can show a good SMART status but the seq. speed fluctuate.

A good HDD will have a smooth down slope when you benchmark it with HDTune.