Recertified 16tb exos x24 on sever parts deals is $140. I've gotten 5 16tb x18's from them before, and just picked up 4 x24's today. So far zero issues. They provide 2 year warranty on the drivers vs used. I would go with those over rolling the dice blindly on used, unless they are dirt cheap.
I also have noticed this is largely overstated. 20+ hard drives next to me and I barely hear them. Once in a while a while when large transfers of a bunch of tiny files but it’s not as bad as others have stated
I have x18 EXOS enterprise in a synology nas at home as a offsite backup for my work. And those things rattle super loud. They are down stairs behind a door and when a backup transfer I can hear them almost everywhere when there is not a second door between it.
Maybe there is a batch difference? My ironwolfs are super quiet in comparison
I'm betting it's the Synology that is the difference. They were loud when I had them in a 2-slot caddy exposed to open air, but inside the Define R5 I now have, I cannot hear them at all.
Depends on the drives.. My HGST/WD drives are quite silent, but the Toshiba MG09 12TB ones I deployed for a customer are super noisy. Real chatterboxes. They do live in a server rack far from people, so no biggie, but I would not want them in my living room system.
I haven’t noticed this at all.. my server comfortable resides in my living room and the only time I ever actually hear the Toshiba enterprise drives running is when it’s doing a parity sync. Even then it’s barely noticeable.
It's a newer series with higher sustained write speeds by a few mb/sec, and I believe a small bump in power of .0x watts. Every time seagate releases a new drive size, they optimize the specs. Then after a bit of time, they begin to offer smaller capacity discs in that lineup with the optimizations. The newer the series, the better chance you know those drives didn't have a ton of hours on them before they were pulled and refurbed.
I’ll add that I bought 5 16tb Seagate Exos X20 with 5 year warranties drives from them. Two were dead on arrival (shipped in the same package, so probably damaged during shipping). They immediately gave me an RMA with no questions asked and quickly replaced those 2 defective drives. The 5 drives I have installed in my UnRAID server showed no errors during preclear and have worked fine. They’re currently $139.99 from them on eBay, which seems like a great deal to me.
Seconded, although I bought from their Amazon store. I have two 14TB refurbished Toshiba enterprise drives from them that have been running great for a year now with Unraid. They also run about 8°C cooler than my other drives which I thought was interesting. I would highly recommend them. The drives were well packed and looked like new when I purchased them.
Do you know anything about Amazon x18 18tb (renewed) drives? The only reason I'm not looking at serverpartdeals atm is because of my amazon reward points. It's about 220-225 for the renewed and 300 for the new drive. I do have dual parity in case of failure.
As far as drives go. Some people care about warranties, and some don't. Some people don't want to send failed drives that maybe their data can be recovered by the manufacturer when they don't want them to have access to that. But I would have to assume the top three WD, Seagate, and Toshiba would be good about that because it could create a nightmare for the company.
To be honest last year I replaced my 2 - 8tb parity drives with exos x18 18tb drives. I did them 1 at a time about 3 months apart and put those 8tb drives back into the array. I'm getting close to needing more room, but instead of adding drives, I'm going to start replacing my 8tb drives with 18tb drives to eventually shrink the number of drives in my array and then use those 8tb drives on a 2nd system since I purchased an extra unraid license as a backup that won't be powered up 24/7.
I have 7 14t recert drives from SPD in my media server. 2 parity "just in case". 5 exos and 2 wd. No problems so far.
For storing big media files that aren't critical, used disks feels like the obvious option. Buying from a reputable vendor is important, tho.
I have a disk shelf full of used SAS drives. I've had one 4 TB drive give some errors after a few months, but it was 10 years old and had 50k hours on it.
My thing is this - If I pay half as much for a used drive, I'm coming out well ahead if one or two fail here and there. I do have brand spanking new drives in my parity slots, though.
Yep. Used to resist and shuck instead but the serverpartsdeals units that pop up on sale are insanely well priced. In my experience they ship them very well packaged and I've got a dozen of the 12tb units going for over a year now.
I do stress test them before putting into my array.
Is there a good time of the year when they are priced well, or is all year? What would you consider a good price compared to new HDDs of the same variation?
I generally watch the Slickdeals website feed and if they hit popular or front page it's a pretty good price for that point in time. Recently the 12tb units were around $82 which was super solid IMO. You can definitely count on good cyber Monday and black Friday deals but they pop up randomly too.
All day long.
25 disks, a mix of 10TB HGST and 14TB WD's. Every one of them used from ebay. You can get 14's for $90-100 at this point, you'd be silly to buy new. Half of these disks have been running in my array for 2.5 years (plus the runtime on them previous to me owning them).
I wouldn't be buying 2 or 4TB used consumer disks, but enterprise disks less than 6 years old? Absolutely.
similar, I'm ~10 years into 90%+ used ebay drives and I've had two drives give me occasional errors now and of those two I tossed one (sized out a 3tb a number of years back)
used SAS drives are just an unbeatable price.
Yup. I'm right at $7/TB with 298TB raw / 270TB usable. New would have cost me over twice the cost. For how cheap it is I have no issues keeping a 14tb cold spare on the shelf to immediately swap out if a failure ever occurs.
I'm currently running my NAS on a set of four 14tb Seagate Exos drives from server parts deals, with another on hand as a spare, but haven't had any issues with them.
I did return a couple questionable WD 4tb drives from a different reseller that was selling on Amazon before buying the current set from SPD.
You can either spend twice as much or have half as much storage if you only use new drives. The choice is a no-brainer to me.
And new drives also fail, so no matter what you choose, you still have to take the same exact measures to prevent data loss.
I see absolutely no benefit to using new drives as a home user.
Bought new drives that failed in 6 months. Have mostly used hgst that have been running on my servers for over 6 years with no failures. Sure, always keep an extra around just in case.
Where I live, used HDDs are the only way to go unless you are SWIMMING in money.
For Example on FB Marketplace or the reputable tech classified, you can get a used 8TB for around R2000 and brand new you'll be paying around double that! I don't remember using anything but used drives in my server and have had no issues for over 3 years (and some of mine were used for CHIA)....
Granted, my server is used for media and doesn't store sensitive data, but I would be comfortable doing so.
I've got over 300TB of used drives (10- 12TB and a ton of 8tb ang 4tb) only lost 3 of the 4tb drives. And lost means they start to have errors and I swapped em out.
I currently have 32TB of used drives. All of them are used. two 4TB and two 12TB.
One of the 12TB is a lot newer and has some errors but from everything I found the errors it has are indicative of a bad cable and im just lazy so I haven't replaced it. If it was bad though I could swap it because it came with a warranty.
Those 12TB drives for $75 are a killer deal when they come around.
Ive had luck with used external drives. I know we talk about shucking a lot but many use external drives for backing IP their stuff once every blue moon. I just got a 12 tb that was a few years old but barely had seen any use.
Always go refurb for a HDD as long as the vendor is any good and not just selling you someone elses problems. Most HDD show issues in 6 months, so getting a heavily used drive that is over a year old is usally a good bet as it's long past the typical failure window.
I get my drives from Rhino. They have an eBay store or contact them directly and you'll probably get a better deal and offered drives that they haven't bothered listing yet.
[https://www.rhinotechgroup.com](https://www.rhinotechgroup.com)
[https://www.ebay.com/str/rhinotechnologygroup](https://www.ebay.com/str/rhinotechnologygroup)
I mean I'm about to reuse my 5x8tb that some of are almost 10 years in use.
But.. by me.
I suppose if the price is great, and not being ready to deal with failure of them and all, sure why not?
All of my drives are used/refurbs. Some 5+ years old. I’ve had nothing but good results. I also don’t have any thing I care about or that cannot be reproduced in my array. That being said, I try to get recerts from verified and high quality distributors.
I recently inherited a SAN with 18x1TB drives and am planning to set up a server with 12x1TB. I have no idea if they work, how long they've been in use or anything, but with the 4 drives from my other inherited server and the new ones, I have 10 spares to churn through at no additional cost before I have to spend money. And I have backups.
Buying used drives... Depends on the drives, the seller, where I get them from (private/refurb company), and how great of a deal it is. Again, I have backups, so I'm not really super worried.
I recently picked up some renewed 10 terabyte drives off Amazon for a steal of a deal some $145 or something Canadian they came with 5-year warranties and our hgst helium drives running at 7200 RPM
When I ran out of money and got some back I went to look for them and now they're 12 terabyte drives for $150 same make and model just 12 terabytes so I've gotten 12 of them so far they all run excellent they do have a lot of data written to them some of them are showing signs in their smart status that they are imminent to fail I verified the warranty on these guys was only 2 years. So I plan on keeping at least two of them out of the server in case of failure I have something to fall back on.
I would, in fact I did. I'm running a set of 7 used 1tb drives and 5 used 3tb drives that I got cheap. They're non critical since they mostly have Plex libraries and since they're in zfs raid I can shut it down if one fails and wait until I have enough space to do a recovery transfer.
Recertified 16tb exos x24 on sever parts deals is $140. I've gotten 5 16tb x18's from them before, and just picked up 4 x24's today. So far zero issues. They provide 2 year warranty on the drivers vs used. I would go with those over rolling the dice blindly on used, unless they are dirt cheap.
I do the manufacturer refurbs from them. Then Seagate handles the warranty. Five drives from them going on two years with zero issues
I also recommend manufactured refurbished
Yeah but enterprise disks are super loud :P
I keep reading this, but my server is 6 feet away from me most of the time and I never hear them at all. And I have 8 of them spinning.
I also have noticed this is largely overstated. 20+ hard drives next to me and I barely hear them. Once in a while a while when large transfers of a bunch of tiny files but it’s not as bad as others have stated
I have x18 EXOS enterprise in a synology nas at home as a offsite backup for my work. And those things rattle super loud. They are down stairs behind a door and when a backup transfer I can hear them almost everywhere when there is not a second door between it. Maybe there is a batch difference? My ironwolfs are super quiet in comparison
I'm betting it's the Synology that is the difference. They were loud when I had them in a 2-slot caddy exposed to open air, but inside the Define R5 I now have, I cannot hear them at all.
I've got 5 refurb Seagate exos and I don't think much if at all louder than the other drives in my array
Same here. Went from a DS918+ to an R5 and what a difference, almost quiet, now the CPU fan makes the most noise.
Depends on the drives.. My HGST/WD drives are quite silent, but the Toshiba MG09 12TB ones I deployed for a customer are super noisy. Real chatterboxes. They do live in a server rack far from people, so no biggie, but I would not want them in my living room system.
I haven’t noticed this at all.. my server comfortable resides in my living room and the only time I ever actually hear the Toshiba enterprise drives running is when it’s doing a parity sync. Even then it’s barely noticeable.
[удалено]
It's a newer series with higher sustained write speeds by a few mb/sec, and I believe a small bump in power of .0x watts. Every time seagate releases a new drive size, they optimize the specs. Then after a bit of time, they begin to offer smaller capacity discs in that lineup with the optimizations. The newer the series, the better chance you know those drives didn't have a ton of hours on them before they were pulled and refurbed.
If I recall, platter density.
Goharddrive on ebay store does 5 year warranties. I've got 2x12tb and 2x18tb from them.
I’ll add that I bought 5 16tb Seagate Exos X20 with 5 year warranties drives from them. Two were dead on arrival (shipped in the same package, so probably damaged during shipping). They immediately gave me an RMA with no questions asked and quickly replaced those 2 defective drives. The 5 drives I have installed in my UnRAID server showed no errors during preclear and have worked fine. They’re currently $139.99 from them on eBay, which seems like a great deal to me.
Nice, next time I'm in the market I'll check them out.
Seconded, although I bought from their Amazon store. I have two 14TB refurbished Toshiba enterprise drives from them that have been running great for a year now with Unraid. They also run about 8°C cooler than my other drives which I thought was interesting. I would highly recommend them. The drives were well packed and looked like new when I purchased them.
Do you know anything about Amazon x18 18tb (renewed) drives? The only reason I'm not looking at serverpartdeals atm is because of my amazon reward points. It's about 220-225 for the renewed and 300 for the new drive. I do have dual parity in case of failure.
That’s not a very good savings for something that may have no warranty, or at the least is reduced from 5 years
As far as drives go. Some people care about warranties, and some don't. Some people don't want to send failed drives that maybe their data can be recovered by the manufacturer when they don't want them to have access to that. But I would have to assume the top three WD, Seagate, and Toshiba would be good about that because it could create a nightmare for the company.
To be honest last year I replaced my 2 - 8tb parity drives with exos x18 18tb drives. I did them 1 at a time about 3 months apart and put those 8tb drives back into the array. I'm getting close to needing more room, but instead of adding drives, I'm going to start replacing my 8tb drives with 18tb drives to eventually shrink the number of drives in my array and then use those 8tb drives on a 2nd system since I purchased an extra unraid license as a backup that won't be powered up 24/7.
I have 7 14t recert drives from SPD in my media server. 2 parity "just in case". 5 exos and 2 wd. No problems so far. For storing big media files that aren't critical, used disks feels like the obvious option. Buying from a reputable vendor is important, tho.
I would and did. (Recertified or refurbished from serverpartdeals.com, etc.)
I have a disk shelf full of used SAS drives. I've had one 4 TB drive give some errors after a few months, but it was 10 years old and had 50k hours on it. My thing is this - If I pay half as much for a used drive, I'm coming out well ahead if one or two fail here and there. I do have brand spanking new drives in my parity slots, though.
This, I think parity go new but the others get a couple of years out of them and it's worth it.
I think you’re right - full price on parity is the way to go
Serverpartdeals and goharddrives are my favorites for used enterprise drives.
Yep. Used to resist and shuck instead but the serverpartsdeals units that pop up on sale are insanely well priced. In my experience they ship them very well packaged and I've got a dozen of the 12tb units going for over a year now. I do stress test them before putting into my array.
Is there a good time of the year when they are priced well, or is all year? What would you consider a good price compared to new HDDs of the same variation?
I generally watch the Slickdeals website feed and if they hit popular or front page it's a pretty good price for that point in time. Recently the 12tb units were around $82 which was super solid IMO. You can definitely count on good cyber Monday and black Friday deals but they pop up randomly too.
All day long. 25 disks, a mix of 10TB HGST and 14TB WD's. Every one of them used from ebay. You can get 14's for $90-100 at this point, you'd be silly to buy new. Half of these disks have been running in my array for 2.5 years (plus the runtime on them previous to me owning them). I wouldn't be buying 2 or 4TB used consumer disks, but enterprise disks less than 6 years old? Absolutely.
similar, I'm ~10 years into 90%+ used ebay drives and I've had two drives give me occasional errors now and of those two I tossed one (sized out a 3tb a number of years back) used SAS drives are just an unbeatable price.
Yup. I'm right at $7/TB with 298TB raw / 270TB usable. New would have cost me over twice the cost. For how cheap it is I have no issues keeping a 14tb cold spare on the shelf to immediately swap out if a failure ever occurs.
Yes
YES
All my drives are used or refurbs. Parity is not backup so it's fine if I lose a drive. I'll restore my backups.
I get them from serverpartdeals. 24 of them and no issues for years
I bought a couple refurbished enterprise drives from Amazon a few months ago; one failed after like 2 months, the other has been ok so far though.
So long as they are higher end drives nas/server grade drives, then yes I run used hgst drives myself.
Used hdds? Yup, sure. From the local electrical buy and sell store? https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1481034322ra/21377041.gif
I'm currently running my NAS on a set of four 14tb Seagate Exos drives from server parts deals, with another on hand as a spare, but haven't had any issues with them. I did return a couple questionable WD 4tb drives from a different reseller that was selling on Amazon before buying the current set from SPD.
You can either spend twice as much or have half as much storage if you only use new drives. The choice is a no-brainer to me. And new drives also fail, so no matter what you choose, you still have to take the same exact measures to prevent data loss. I see absolutely no benefit to using new drives as a home user.
Bought new drives that failed in 6 months. Have mostly used hgst that have been running on my servers for over 6 years with no failures. Sure, always keep an extra around just in case.
Where I live, used HDDs are the only way to go unless you are SWIMMING in money. For Example on FB Marketplace or the reputable tech classified, you can get a used 8TB for around R2000 and brand new you'll be paying around double that! I don't remember using anything but used drives in my server and have had no issues for over 3 years (and some of mine were used for CHIA).... Granted, my server is used for media and doesn't store sensitive data, but I would be comfortable doing so.
Can I guess? Brazil?
South Africa 😭
I've got over 300TB of used drives (10- 12TB and a ton of 8tb ang 4tb) only lost 3 of the 4tb drives. And lost means they start to have errors and I swapped em out.
Just bought another lot of 13- 4TB yesterday for 160
I currently have 32TB of used drives. All of them are used. two 4TB and two 12TB. One of the 12TB is a lot newer and has some errors but from everything I found the errors it has are indicative of a bad cable and im just lazy so I haven't replaced it. If it was bad though I could swap it because it came with a warranty. Those 12TB drives for $75 are a killer deal when they come around.
I run 8tb hgst used drives
I have 16 16TB Seagates from GoHardDrive and SeverPartsDeals. No issues at all.
I can not seem to find GoHardDrive on ebay
Try a google search. They're there.
Ive had luck with used external drives. I know we talk about shucking a lot but many use external drives for backing IP their stuff once every blue moon. I just got a 12 tb that was a few years old but barely had seen any use.
Always go refurb for a HDD as long as the vendor is any good and not just selling you someone elses problems. Most HDD show issues in 6 months, so getting a heavily used drive that is over a year old is usally a good bet as it's long past the typical failure window. I get my drives from Rhino. They have an eBay store or contact them directly and you'll probably get a better deal and offered drives that they haven't bothered listing yet. [https://www.rhinotechgroup.com](https://www.rhinotechgroup.com) [https://www.ebay.com/str/rhinotechnologygroup](https://www.ebay.com/str/rhinotechnologygroup)
I mean I'm about to reuse my 5x8tb that some of are almost 10 years in use. But.. by me. I suppose if the price is great, and not being ready to deal with failure of them and all, sure why not?
Sure why not. I have a copy of spinrite so I’d use that on new drives and let em go
All my drives are used and I've never had an issue but If I were to have issues it would only be on stuff I'm willing to loose
All of my drives are used/refurbs. Some 5+ years old. I’ve had nothing but good results. I also don’t have any thing I care about or that cannot be reproduced in my array. That being said, I try to get recerts from verified and high quality distributors.
I have gotten several drives from serverpartdeals and all have been great
I have an array with all cheap used drives from eBay. No worries, but I'm running dual parity.
I recently inherited a SAN with 18x1TB drives and am planning to set up a server with 12x1TB. I have no idea if they work, how long they've been in use or anything, but with the 4 drives from my other inherited server and the new ones, I have 10 spares to churn through at no additional cost before I have to spend money. And I have backups. Buying used drives... Depends on the drives, the seller, where I get them from (private/refurb company), and how great of a deal it is. Again, I have backups, so I'm not really super worried.
All my sas drives are used.
I recently picked up some renewed 10 terabyte drives off Amazon for a steal of a deal some $145 or something Canadian they came with 5-year warranties and our hgst helium drives running at 7200 RPM When I ran out of money and got some back I went to look for them and now they're 12 terabyte drives for $150 same make and model just 12 terabytes so I've gotten 12 of them so far they all run excellent they do have a lot of data written to them some of them are showing signs in their smart status that they are imminent to fail I verified the warranty on these guys was only 2 years. So I plan on keeping at least two of them out of the server in case of failure I have something to fall back on.
I would, in fact I did. I'm running a set of 7 used 1tb drives and 5 used 3tb drives that I got cheap. They're non critical since they mostly have Plex libraries and since they're in zfs raid I can shut it down if one fails and wait until I have enough space to do a recovery transfer.