Where to find used HDDs that haven't been chia'd?
The project I'm working on is requiring a lot more data storage space than expected. As in, a lot more space. Since the data is temporary, I'm hoping to get some used SATA compatible hdds that are inexpensive. I just don't want to get drives that have been used for chia mining. I've checked eBay -- but most sellers don't have a good history of their drives listed. Does anyone know of a reputable place to get decommissioned equipment?
(edit, sorry, this ended up in the wrong place)
Comments
I heard good things from https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/ you may have a look at them.
Cheers Dream
Grab your vmWare toblerone today.
HDD's aren't destroyed, damaged, or even impacted by Chia. HDD's are usually ok to buy used as long as they have low power on hours.
Chia destroyed SSD's and NVMe's because of the high amount of reads/writes that are required to make a "plot" (which then gets moved to HDD).
So, you should be good to go as long as you stay away from buying used SSD's.
It's usually environmental factors that kill HDDs, extreme temperatures, constant temperature fluctuation or vibration being the most obvious. In my limited experience, drives that are powered on, well cooled, and in constant use, fail more gracefully and last longer than occasionally used drives in a poorly cooled enclosure. So it's always a gamble.
At the end of a day, brand new drives do fail, you need backup/redundancy for important data regardless, so the reliability issue comes down to a trade off of price vs. the aggravation of loss recovery.
Just buy from local people in your neighborhood and you'll be okay.
Be aware that SMART data can be wiped/overwritten/falsified and some shady merchants do that in order to make their drives look better.
Get a cheap SAS2 HBA; used SAS drives are cheaper than SATA. 8TB/10TB for as low as $6/TB from RhinoTech, OceanTech, and others.
LSI SAS2008-based cards (9211, M1015, H200, etc.) or 2308-based (9207, 2208) flashed to IT mode, or Adaptec 7805 (and just flip to HBA mode in fw config).
Are the savings that significant? I'd be really wary of 2nd hand drives. Without a chunky raid setup I'd rather not...
As seanho said the price for used sas drives is fairly low. I was looking at ~$25 for 4tb SAS drives.
I did actually think about getting a card to use the SAS drives. I think I'd rather buy a used server with a bunch of bays - a local recycler actually has some that appear decently priced but they have weird hours. I went to call them at 3:30 this afternoon and they were already closed for the weekend.
Also some drives wrap round at 65536 hours.
Make sure you don't yell at them
Daniel15 | https://d.sb/. List of all my VPSes: https://d.sb/servers
dnstools.ws - DNS lookups, pings, and traceroutes from 30 locations worldwide.
When the AIs take over, they will say this was us yelling at their babies.