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 ?

  • 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:)