Have you ever purchased used or “renewed” enterprise drives at a low price?
Yes? Continue to question #2.
No? Close this page and power off your computer or phone.
Did these drives see 5+ years of service (40,000+ power-on hours) before you purchased them?
Yes? Continue to question #3.
No? Delete your forum account. (Or keep reading, whatever you prefer.)
In the time that you owned them, how soon until they failed? (If any at all?) How long did you own them for? Did you use them as 24/7 NAS drives, or as “occasional backup” drives that only spin up weekly or monthly to receive backups?
I’m browsing eBay and Amazon, and I can’t help but notice “used” HGST helium-filled drives selling for very low prices. I know there has to be a catch.
Some of these drives supposedly have manufacture dates of 2020 and 2018. (This means that if they were in datacenters, they could have seen 4 or 6 straight years of nonstop usage.)
I realize there is the “bathtub curve” of failure rates, but those usually reveal an increase in the failure rate after 5 years. Doesn’t this mean that purchasing these used or renewed enterprise drives carries a risk of them suddenly failing within one year, or even sooner, just based on the constant wear they had as datacenter drives?
If they are to be used for weekly or monthly backups, does that lessen chance of failure, simply because they will not be spinning 24/7?
What has your experience been?
Is it worth it, since this will save as much as 70% in cost when compared to a brand new drive?
I have 8 drives fitting your description. 12TB SAS HGST, around 40k hours. Currently in use as an offline replication target spun up once or twice a month. They were sold as used datacenter drives for sub €95/each including shipping. 2 year untested seller warranty . Only downside so far is that they are louder than my bought as new Toshibas MG09’s.
I’ll let you know when they start failing I guess.
They’ve been spinning for around 10-12 days since I bought them. I ran tests to see how they behaved before I replicated data to them. The system is currently off.
I’ve had them for ~2 months, so still too early to draw any definite conclusions.
I see it as an experiment.
You need to understand that @Stux is an “interesting” person.
Not only is he obsessed with traffic lights, but apparently he shops for HDDs at the local bath and beauty store.
Click me for bathtub fun!
He’s referring to the “bathtub curve”, where the failure rate of HDDs is highest when brand new or very old, yet they’re relatively safe and stable in between. The graph looks like a bathtub. Therefor, the best drives to acquire are those that have enough lifetime hours to get them just past the “first side of the bathtub”, but not so old that they are on the “other side of the bathtub”.
I’ve only bought used He10’s for my NAS. The current set is now at 27-48kHours. I had a few early failure(s), all replaced with zero fuss as part of the 5-year warranty (goharddrive.com). The latest drive addition had 17kHours when I put it in.
I expect longer runtimes on used He10’s going forward. Hence I bought a complete replacement batch at $79 ea (w/5 year warranty).