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Buying used HDD's

tauwtech
By tauwtech
in Storage Devices
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So the day has come, I've run out of space on my 1TB secondary drive and I'm looking to add more. At the moment I can get a brand new 3TB HDD for about 90 euro's or I could get used 2TB drives for 30 euro's each. So price wise the 2TB thing looks best to me, I have a sufficient PSU and I have enough SATA ports left for the drives but! I don't want to spend 90 euro's to find out that the HDD's aren't worth doodoo.

 

So, is there anyway I can test the hard drives before purchasing them? I'm thinking of buying a SATA dock (which has been on my list for a long long time) and testing the drives on my laptop (or I'll just ask the dude if he can show me that the drives work). Are there any telltale signs of damage to the HDD besides the obvious? And with obvious I mean big dents, holes and missing parts. 

The evolutionist: CPU: i5-2500k 4.5 GHz OC CPU-COOLER: LEPA Aquachanger 240 AIO GPU: AMD RADEON HD 6670* RAM: 2X 4GB DDR3 MB: ASUS P67 Sabertooth Rev. 3 PSU: Cooler Master PSU CASE: Aerocool Strike-X One BOOT DRIVE: OCZ Octane 256GB SSD DATA DRIVE: 1TB Western Digital WDC & 3TB Western Digital WDC OS: Windows 10 Professional x64

 

*Loaner to replace my recently died ASUS GTX 750Ti-PH-2GD5. May you rest in peace

 

If you have a pc and you replace all parts of that pc, is it still the same pc?

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There's two things I will never buy used: HDDs and PSUs, it's just not worth it. 

 

You have no real way to know what they've put the drives through, what could be just about to break and so on. 

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DO NOT BUY USED HDD

             ☼

ψ ︿_____︿_ψ_   

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Honestly, I don't know how you would verify if the drive is any good and they are not going to sell you a fucked hdd. 

 

The best thing I could think of is you get them to dban the hdd, and you arrive when the hdd is almost finished dbanning and wait till it's done, then look at the drives SMART for reallocation sectors and other errors, but I don't think anyone would agree to that. 

 

Alternately, you could buy it from a store or on eBay and get them to send you the SMART after they dban it, then dban after you receive it and compare to SMART data to see if the drive is fine and what they sold it as, and if it is not, get a refund 

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6 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

There's two things I will never buy used: HDDs and PSUs, it's just not worth it. 

 

You have no real way to know what they've put the drives through, what could be just about to break and so on. 

Yeah that was what I was thinking to but the double storage for the same price sounded so freaking interesting to me :P

The evolutionist: CPU: i5-2500k 4.5 GHz OC CPU-COOLER: LEPA Aquachanger 240 AIO GPU: AMD RADEON HD 6670* RAM: 2X 4GB DDR3 MB: ASUS P67 Sabertooth Rev. 3 PSU: Cooler Master PSU CASE: Aerocool Strike-X One BOOT DRIVE: OCZ Octane 256GB SSD DATA DRIVE: 1TB Western Digital WDC & 3TB Western Digital WDC OS: Windows 10 Professional x64

 

*Loaner to replace my recently died ASUS GTX 750Ti-PH-2GD5. May you rest in peace

 

If you have a pc and you replace all parts of that pc, is it still the same pc?

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Also, if the smart test shows up good today there is a always a possibility that it will show broken the next day. HDD lives are largely unpredictable.

Talking from unfortunate experiences

Please quote me so that I know that you have replied unless it is my own topic.

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42 minutes ago, Ezio Auditore said:

Also, if the smart test shows up good today there is a always a possibility that it will show broken the next day. HDD lives are largely unpredictable.

Talking from unfortunate experiences

My External HDD died on me today, had everything from close to 10 years ago. No Backup ;(

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1 minute ago, CookieTheLabrador said:

My External HDD died on me today, had everything from close to 10 years ago. No Backup ;(

Did it mechanically die or did it just ask you to reformat? there is software to get the data back if the latter is the case.

 

On to my main point, I'm going for a new drive, thanks everyone for their opinions and insight!

The evolutionist: CPU: i5-2500k 4.5 GHz OC CPU-COOLER: LEPA Aquachanger 240 AIO GPU: AMD RADEON HD 6670* RAM: 2X 4GB DDR3 MB: ASUS P67 Sabertooth Rev. 3 PSU: Cooler Master PSU CASE: Aerocool Strike-X One BOOT DRIVE: OCZ Octane 256GB SSD DATA DRIVE: 1TB Western Digital WDC & 3TB Western Digital WDC OS: Windows 10 Professional x64

 

*Loaner to replace my recently died ASUS GTX 750Ti-PH-2GD5. May you rest in peace

 

If you have a pc and you replace all parts of that pc, is it still the same pc?

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Just now, tauwtech said:

Did it mechanically die or did it just ask you to reformat? there is software to get the data back if the latter is the case.

 

On to my main point, I'm going for a new drive, thanks everyone for their opinions and insight!

My sister formatted the drive using our LG TV. She tried to record something and she selected OK, instead of Cancel. The drive isn't being picked up by any of my PC's. It shows up in Disk Manager though

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2 minutes ago, tauwtech said:

Did it mechanically die or did it just ask you to reformat? there is software to get the data back if the latter is the case.

 

On to my main point, I'm going for a new drive, thanks everyone for their opinions and insight!

Good choice

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2 hours ago, CookieTheLabrador said:

My External HDD died on me today, had everything from close to 10 years ago. No Backup ;(

. I also didn't have backup and what's more, the hdd on both my pcs died a day apart.

Please quote me so that I know that you have replied unless it is my own topic.

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Never buy an used hard drive, ever.

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