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 ?

  • ChewyEnglish
    3•4 hours ago

    I don’t know where exactly you live, but if your in the EU customs/taxes + shipping will make the deal worse, but better than expected.

    E.g. for Germany, this drive would cost 382€ with UPS Saver Duties & Taxes included, instead of 273€ for the drive itself.

    I’ve found the same drive with a local commercial eBay seller for 420€, including taxes and shipping.

    A new 24TB drive would cost 485€.

    Edit: IMO a better deal would be 22TB drives, which have the same price per TB but are new. But then again, their used/recertified price is also ~10% lower than new.

    • SynapseOPEnglish
      2•4 hours ago

      Thanks for the advice. I found that the import tax would be 80~100€. I when for eBay Germany, and ordered some drive there: 4x WD Ultrastar DC HC520 12TB, helium-sealed, for 120€ each. I will test them upon receiving and see how it goes from there :)

      • ChewyEnglish
        1•3 hours ago

        Great to hear you found my comment helpful.

        Just make sure you make backups regularly. Especially with used drives, I wouldn’t count on them surviving the stress of a rebuild. If a second drive fails in a RAID10, all data might be gone.

        Edit: I’d be thankful if you could report back how the test goes. I need a drive for a backup ;) and I’m considering buying from eBay too.

        I will test them upon receiving and see how it goes from there:)