this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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Do you buy refurbished drives? (swg-empire.de)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de to c/datahoarder@lemmy.world
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Since the enshittification of streaming providers is continuing I'm thinking of going back to my own collection saved on a central server for the family's convenience.

I just need more storage. But the only 8-12 TB drives in the 100-150 € price range are refurbished ones. I could only afford one at the moment so some resilience with RAID is out of the picture.

Can I trust these drives? Or will they fail in a few years? I kind of don't want to have to rip all my stuff twice.

Edit: Thanks for the input. I bit the bullet and was able to find a 12 TB HDD at 142 €.

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[–] CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone 11 points 2 days ago

I buy them from serverpartdeals and have had a great experience. They're really good about returns within 90 days if you get a bad drive

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 9 points 2 days ago

Yep.

Got 3 in my raid 5 raid now, and one (8tb) in my server.

I have backups and replication, because even new drives fail.

[–] dogma11@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Happily using white label drives from https://goharddrive.com/ for the past 5 or so years, haven't had one fail yet. I will happily buy more from them or https://serverpartdeals.com/

[–] ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

Used both of these sites without issue.

15 drive NAS that has been running for 6+ years, all refurb, have had 3 fail over the years: 2 eventually after years of service, 1 doa/didn’t pass my precheck (badblocks). The doa drive and one of the long drives were replaced by serverpartdeals and goharddrive with no issue, the other drive was actually rma’d by seagate despite being a refurb (initially supplied by spd and still had factory warranty).

Highly recommend

[–] Know_not_Scotty_does@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Had great luck so far with some seagate 12tb ones. I bought them pre-tariff bullshit for like $99/drive and they have been happily spinning away since. I think I got them from serverparts.

[–] mushroommunk@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago

For just movies and music and other things easily replaced like that I trust refurbished from reputable sources. I would strongly encourage RAID and off site backup for important stuff.

[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

All of my drives outside of my main PC are used. Never had one fail, ever. Many backups so no worries either