[ale] Refurbished HDDs

[Jim Kinney]

Manufacturers don't refurbish hard drives. It doesn't happen. Third parties
"refurbish" by wiping and resetting drive firmware. Manufacture warranties
are void.

I was not clear in my offer. I'm not asking for money. I just want this
hardware hauled away by someone who wants it. I lack time and interest to
be involved. So, Alex, if you want this stuff, let me know. Once Alex
decides, I'll toss the rest on the group for another rehoming event. I want
to unload the entire space formerly used as my test gear server closet. I
have several thousand systems at work to wrestle with and I no longer
experiment at home with new technologies. At the end of the day, I make
tiny, wearable sculptures from silver and occasionally gold or platinum,
semi and precious stones, and fused glass. I'm done making invisible things
that 99.9% of humans don't understand.

-- 
James P. Kinney III

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain


*http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
<http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/>*

On Mon, Feb 2, 2026, 11:54 PM Alex Carver via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> 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.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20260203/2943cde5/attachment.htm>