[ale] Refurbished HDDs

[Alex Carver]

I'm no stranger to drive failures but I'm also not exactly flush with 
cash enough to buy a dozen drives at over $300 each. Recall I wasn't 
asking about used drives, I asked about manufacturer refurbished which 
is a bit different.

This is going in a NAS already, redundancy is part of the process but 
there's other backups, too.

On 2026-02-02 10:20, Bob Toxen wrote:
> It's been my experience that high quality disks, such as the Western
> Digital Caviar series, will last 5 years and should be replaced at
> that time!!!  I find most other brands to be suboptimal, e.g., expect
> a head crash and catastrophic loss of all data.  The Caviar Black disks
> spin at 7200 RPM and carry a 5 year warranty!
> 
> I've had poor luck with Seagate.  YMMV.
> 
> I realize that a RAID array is redundant but is it worth being cheap to
> hopefully replace every failed disk before another one also fails?
> 
> Understand that the MTBF is less than that for one disk increased by
> being able to continue until two disks fail.  This is because, assuming
> all disks of the same type and time in service are more likely to fail
> around the same time, same as incandescent light bulbs.
> 
> I suggest, if you use refurbished disks, pick a RAID mode, such as RAID6,
> with double redundancy due to two different parities that can withstand
> two disk failures in the array.
> 
> Wikipedia's "RAID" entry is excellent.
> 
> If the cost isn't out of your pocket buy new WD Black!
> 
> Bob
> 
> [Bob's political comment suppressed by Bob]
> 
> On Sat, Jan 31, 2026 at 06:25:39PM -0800, Alex Carver via Ale wrote:
>> Anyone have recommendations for an online place to buy refurbished HDDs (not
>> SSDs)? I want to add a few more drives to the NAS.