I’m in the marked for a used 4TB for my offsite backup. As I’ve recently acquired four 12TB drives (about 10000 hours and one to two years old) for 130€ each, I was optimistic. 30 to 40€ I thought. Easy.

WRONG! Used drive, failing SMART stats, 40€. Here is a new drive, no hours on it. Oh wait, it was cold storage and it’s almost 8 years old. Price? 90€ (mind you, a new drive costs about 110€). Another drive has already failed, but someone wants 25€ for e-waste. No Sir, it worked fine when I used Check-Disk, please buy. Most of the decent ones are 70 to 80€, way too close to the new price. I PAID 130 FOR 12TB. These drive were almost new and under warranty. WHY DO THIS NUMBNUT WANT 80 EURO FOR A USED 4TB Drive? And what sane person doesn’t put SMART data in their offerings??? I have to ask at least 50 percent of the time. Don’t even get me started on those external hard drives, they were trash to begin with. I’m SO CLOSE to buying a high capacity drive, because in that segment, people actually know what they are doing and understand what they have.

Rant over.

What gives? Did these people buy them, when they were much more expensive? Does anyone now a good site that ships refurbished drives to Germany? Most of those I found are also rippoffs…

  • poncho
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    49 months ago

    Agree 100% about the smart data and hate the excuse of “I have too many drives…” but I guess I understand since they’re a wholesaler. They mostly rely on their vendors for the testing. The only words of advise I can give since I was in the same exact shoes as you a couple months ago is this on ebay: stick to known sellers (serverpartsdeals and goharddrives are the big, reliable ones on there), aim for something less than 5 years old since actual powered on hours aren’t really reliable like miles on a car, look for a seller warranty and a free return policy not a manufacturer warranty since they were kinda a bitch to deal with, make sure you message them about packaging the drives correctly (bubblewrap + antistatic bag + box) can’t tell how many of them thought it was fine sending a drive in a yellow bubblewrap envelope, and the biggest one is multiple drives since you already have that covered I don’t need to explain it. For 4tb I wouldn’t go anywhere above 35$ USD think that’s 33€ but could be wrong. I wish you luck