[ale] Refurbished HDDs

[Chuck Payne]

Alex,

When Jim offers hardware, he offers it. I recived a lot from him. Still
grateful for the haul. I just saying.

On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 7:58 AM Jim Kinney via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> 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.
>>
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-- 
Terror PUP a.k.a
Chuck "PUP" Payne
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