Refurbished hard drives

[zandor]

I haven't bought myself a new hard drive in a couple of years. SCSI drives being rather pricey, I decided to give refurbs a try and so far so good. A couple of years ago I picked up a 10 pack of 18GB 10k rpm FC-AL drives off eBay for $200. Then last October I bought a pair of 36GB 15k.3s ($90ea) and a 73GB 10k drive ($99) from www.unityelectronics.com. So far I've only had one dud- one of the $20 a pop FC-AL drives started having some serious issues after a few months. I think it's a dead PCB, as it fubars the loop when attached.
Anyone else out there running refurb drives? How are they doing?

 

[DougLite]

Two refurb Samsung SATA units still spinning silently away.

50% failure rate within six months on refurb SCSI units. my Fujitsu MAP3367NP that I bought new is still going strong in the same system that has had the failures (my only SCSI system)

 

[Vertigo Acid]

Used half a dozen refurbed re-certified drives from Seagate and one IBM refurb SCSI drive with good sucess on the SCSI side. My DM10 is also a refurb from Newegg *crosses fingers* so far so good.

 

[ColStripe]

Considering that hard drives are already one of the most unreliable parts of a PC build, getting a refurbed one is just crazy imo. But to each it's own.

 

[zandor]

Considering that hard drives are already one of the most unreliable parts of a PC build, getting a refurbed one is just crazy imo. But to each it's own.

I tend to either run them in raid 1 or 5, or not put anything on them I can't just reinstall. OTOH, I subject drives I bought new to the same treatment. All my important stuff goes on a mirrored pair on my server machine. It's also worth mentioning that I have 4 drives in my main rig and my server box has 13, so it's not a big deal if one of them goes out.

One important thing to remember about hard drives is the most unreliable drive, aside from one with problems (ie- it's a Deathstar or problems come up in a diagnostic test), is a new one. That goes for refurbs and brand new drives. Over a given period of time, a drive is much more likely to take a shit in the first few months than after it's been running a while.

 

[infocalypse]

4x Seagate 10k 147gb drives, all still happy and spinning away. I've run them in RAID5 for the better part of 6 months now with no issues. Time will tell.