Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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People’s thoughts on preowned/refurbished hard drives? (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I’m currently a student so I don’t have thousands to spend on hard drives and I’d really love to make a compact storage server with large capacity to do stuff like a Plex server. I’ve been looking and I see good deals on sites like eBay, however they seem too cheap sometimes. What are things I should look out for/should I just not get used hard drives?

I need to mention this would not be for critical data such as personal photos etc. it would just be raw data storage that I could afford to lose- it would just be a pain.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

In case OP or any visitors don’t know:

Recertified ≠ Refurbished/used/preowned.

Manufacturer recertified means the drive you get is one that passes OEM/factory testing. There’s a certain QA standard that manufacturer recert drives need to meet.

Refurb etc means you get a gamble drive that probably has SMART data reset so you have no idea what you’re getting. Could be a good deal or a waste of money, very little predictability.

Personally I’d never buy a refurb—I’d only buy recert or something that a trusted friend has used.