1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:08,940 we've told you this so many times buying used hard drives is not worth risking 2 00:00:05,400 --> 00:00:10,679 your data but sometimes 3 00:00:08,940 --> 00:00:14,900 offer you just cannot refuse we took that risk and bought eight used hard 4 00:00:12,599 --> 00:00:21,000 drives from eBay totaling 136 terabytes for two thousand dollars 5 00:00:18,900 --> 00:00:26,460 that's almost half the price compared to new really impressive savings but just 6 00:00:23,760 --> 00:00:30,960 like buying a used GPU on eBay there's a real chance that new to you high 7 00:00:28,980 --> 00:00:35,820 capacity hard drives were used for crypto mining so is even this great deal 8 00:00:34,020 --> 00:00:40,800 worth it if there's a chance your parts arrive with one foot already in the 9 00:00:38,340 --> 00:00:44,460 grave I'll tell you where and why these drives are popping up for sale what red 10 00:00:42,660 --> 00:00:48,780 flags to look out for and when you should consider making an exception to 11 00:00:46,500 --> 00:00:52,920 the don't buy used hard drives rule right after I tell you how to make an 12 00:00:50,700 --> 00:00:56,280 exceptional segue to our sponsor ridge ridge wallet has redefined the 13 00:00:54,840 --> 00:01:00,960 traditional wallet with its compact frame and RFID blocking plates the Bulge 14 00:00:59,460 --> 00:01:07,280 in your pants shouldn't be from your wallet dang it use offer code Linus to 15 00:01:02,879 --> 00:01:07,280 save 10 and get free worldwide shipping 16 00:01:12,740 --> 00:01:18,060 all right the shameful truth is this 17 00:01:16,380 --> 00:01:23,040 isn't even the first time we've bought you storage my personal hard drives are 18 00:01:21,060 --> 00:01:27,960 from a dead Nas and are currently Dying Years Ago Linus splurged on 24 used ssds 19 00:01:26,220 --> 00:01:31,740 for a server at home but the only reason he was comfortable taking that risk was 20 00:01:30,180 --> 00:01:36,540 that he had been reassured by another buyer the ssds were in good health so he 21 00:01:34,860 --> 00:01:42,119 bought them this time though we don't have that luxury but what we do have are 22 00:01:39,240 --> 00:01:45,540 some very attractive prices two hundred dollars for 16 terabytes when the 23 00:01:44,460 --> 00:01:51,960 cheapest new drive with the same capacity would be in the neighborhood of 24 00:01:47,579 --> 00:01:55,020 300 so why are they so cheap supply and 25 00:01:51,960 --> 00:01:57,479 demand wow a huge volume of drives are 26 00:01:55,020 --> 00:02:03,240 being dumped on eBay Marketplace and the like some from Everyday People some that 27 00:02:00,479 --> 00:02:09,140 were refurbished and some from unscrupulous users that use the hard 28 00:02:05,340 --> 00:02:12,900 drive to mine cryptocurrencies 29 00:02:09,140 --> 00:02:15,000 but how much does that hurt them well 30 00:02:12,900 --> 00:02:20,700 there are many coins you can mine on a hard drive today we tried it in the past 31 00:02:17,040 --> 00:02:23,280 the most popular by far is chia mining 32 00:02:20,700 --> 00:02:28,020 it was so popular at launch in May 2021 that Seagate was even considering making 33 00:02:25,319 --> 00:02:33,900 an entire line of cryptocurrency specific hard drives sure anyway Chia 34 00:02:32,040 --> 00:02:39,060 mind hard drives should be pretty safe to buy since Chia runs on a proof of 35 00:02:36,420 --> 00:02:44,099 space algorithm so once the drives are filled with the plot data from Chia to 36 00:02:41,340 --> 00:02:47,879 prove the space or capacity very little read or write activity is required while 37 00:02:45,840 --> 00:02:51,599 mining that space on the drive that means that drives used in Chia mining 38 00:02:49,500 --> 00:02:57,000 are barely used which is enough justification for us to roll the dice on 39 00:02:53,700 --> 00:03:01,260 eBay we settled on two 16 terabyte WD 40 00:02:57,000 --> 00:03:04,500 UltraStar HC 5500s two 16 terabyte 41 00:03:01,260 --> 00:03:08,720 Seagate XO 16x's that one yeah this one 42 00:03:04,500 --> 00:03:11,220 right here and four 18 terabyte 43 00:03:08,720 --> 00:03:17,280 and now they're here let's compare what was advertised with what we actually got 44 00:03:13,560 --> 00:03:19,319 our two WDS were listed with up to 2100 45 00:03:17,280 --> 00:03:26,400 hours of power on yeah not so much we got drives with 2300 46 00:03:23,459 --> 00:03:31,200 and 2600 hours a bit above the stated value but in the grand scheme of things 47 00:03:28,620 --> 00:03:35,580 those extra 10 or 20 days of power on time aren't really a big deal on the 48 00:03:33,599 --> 00:03:40,319 flip side the seagates were expected to arrive with up to 11 49 00:03:38,040 --> 00:03:48,540 000 power on hours and instead they just had like 234 213 hours damn score but 50 00:03:45,659 --> 00:03:52,379 still is that a lot or a little in the Enterprise world the expected lifetime 51 00:03:50,519 --> 00:03:57,599 is around 45 000 hours but anecdotally some of our 52 00:03:55,080 --> 00:04:02,700 staff have drives with 50 to 60 000 hours ultimately it's hard to say when a 53 00:03:59,700 --> 00:04:04,920 drive is too old to use higher hour 54 00:04:02,700 --> 00:04:08,459 drives are typically cheaper but they also might not last as long only you can 55 00:04:06,959 --> 00:04:15,420 decide if it's worth it for your needs but we'd recommend 20 maybe 25 56 00:04:12,180 --> 00:04:17,940 000 hours as a safe ceiling lastly our 57 00:04:15,420 --> 00:04:23,340 four Toshiba drives the packaging just speaks for itself this is what our other 58 00:04:20,519 --> 00:04:28,860 drives came in uh you can see here ESD bags this foam hold your hard drives in 59 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:33,540 and this is how the Toshiba has arrived not great for mechanical devices with 60 00:04:31,080 --> 00:04:37,560 moving Parts like just look at the SATA connectors on this one 61 00:04:35,100 --> 00:04:42,120 I noticed that the corner is just completely passionate on this one oh 62 00:04:39,600 --> 00:04:47,460 it's just actually broken fantastic a quick sound check on the 63 00:04:45,060 --> 00:04:50,300 Toshibas tells us the other drives were damaged as well 64 00:04:55,320 --> 00:05:02,699 huge bummer unfortunately this buyer didn't accept our returns but no matter 65 00:05:00,780 --> 00:05:06,000 the buyer protection on eBay is excellent and we're able to use the 66 00:05:04,020 --> 00:05:10,259 money back guarantee to get our cash back but physical condition and Power on 67 00:05:08,220 --> 00:05:14,100 hours aren't the only way to diagnose our drives it's time to pull the rest of 68 00:05:12,300 --> 00:05:18,660 the smart data thanks to the cloud backup and storage systems experts at 69 00:05:16,320 --> 00:05:22,740 backblaze we know that some parameters are better indicator of failures than 70 00:05:20,820 --> 00:05:29,960 others the combination of attributes 5187 188 and 197 and 198 can accurately 71 00:05:27,600 --> 00:05:36,180 predict an impending drive failure 76.7 percent of the time and how did our 72 00:05:33,180 --> 00:05:38,340 other drives fare flying colors it's 73 00:05:36,180 --> 00:05:42,120 golf rules and we have zeros across the board or at least as far as we could 74 00:05:40,380 --> 00:05:46,259 tell see every Drive manufacturer has different ideas about which of the many 75 00:05:44,340 --> 00:05:51,360 specific smart attributes they should monitor Seagate gave us all five while 76 00:05:48,360 --> 00:05:53,699 neither WD or Toshiba include 187 and 77 00:05:51,360 --> 00:05:59,460 188 one blemish though was that despite its low power cycle and on hours count 78 00:05:56,039 --> 00:06:01,800 attribute 199 on one of our Seagate exos 79 00:05:59,460 --> 00:06:06,300 drives was flagged as concerning this rather nebulous error count increases 80 00:06:03,960 --> 00:06:10,139 when there are infinitesimally short drops in communication between the 81 00:06:08,400 --> 00:06:13,919 controller on the hard drive and the SATA controller on the motherboard 82 00:06:11,520 --> 00:06:17,639 during a data transfer operation these drops are almost exclusively caused by 83 00:06:15,780 --> 00:06:22,620 things like a bad or lucida connection or a faulty SATA controller on the host 84 00:06:20,160 --> 00:06:25,620 system so ultimately they're safe to ignore so long as they aren't 85 00:06:23,880 --> 00:06:29,280 reoccurring and if you confirmed the cabling and the controller are both good 86 00:06:27,419 --> 00:06:34,139 the final thing we can glean from our smart data is the evidence of crypto 87 00:06:31,259 --> 00:06:39,180 mining farming whatever we're looking at threes specific signs high power on 88 00:06:36,720 --> 00:06:43,800 hours are relatively low number of total reads compared to those power on hours 89 00:06:40,979 --> 00:06:47,280 and a total right amount that is roughly equal to the size of the drive although 90 00:06:45,720 --> 00:06:51,720 that's no guarantee with a quick conversion and a little math we can see 91 00:06:49,440 --> 00:06:58,020 our Seagate drives have a total reads and writes that are staggeringly high 92 00:06:54,419 --> 00:07:00,479 given their 250 ish power on hours it's 93 00:06:58,020 --> 00:07:04,560 also roughly twice their capacity which according to our friend Wendell from 94 00:07:02,100 --> 00:07:08,520 level one text could be due to one of the Integrity checks that might run 95 00:07:06,180 --> 00:07:12,780 while refurbishing a truck and lo and behold they've been etched to say they 96 00:07:10,620 --> 00:07:18,060 are recertified weird since there was nothing about that in the listing 97 00:07:14,759 --> 00:07:20,699 oh well we can only speculate on their 98 00:07:18,060 --> 00:07:24,720 history but it's possible these are gray Market drives from a batch of drives 99 00:07:22,560 --> 00:07:30,180 that had their tilt indicators tripped during shipping or were sent back as an 100 00:07:27,060 --> 00:07:32,639 open box return drive failure is mostly 101 00:07:30,180 --> 00:07:37,080 common when a drive is new they may be DOA or fail within a couple days of use 102 00:07:34,979 --> 00:07:41,639 so these drives could have been through all of that before being recertified and 103 00:07:39,539 --> 00:07:45,840 then sold to us checking the Seagate website for warranties has both drives 104 00:07:43,620 --> 00:07:49,680 report back not warranted by Seagate which in theory means that the 105 00:07:47,580 --> 00:07:54,960 recertifying company offers an alternative warranty and this 30-day 106 00:07:52,259 --> 00:07:59,819 seller warranty is exactly that 30 days isn't quite the five years that Seagate 107 00:07:57,479 --> 00:08:03,900 offers from authorized sellers but it's a heck of a lot more than zero days plus 108 00:08:01,560 --> 00:08:08,340 they are WD drives continued their trend of ignoring useful features and chose 109 00:08:06,060 --> 00:08:12,900 not to log total reads and writes thanks WD this makes it difficult for us to 110 00:08:10,860 --> 00:08:17,819 even speculate on their history but at only a hundred or so days of power on 111 00:08:15,240 --> 00:08:22,259 time it seems unlikely they are part of a farm because having their patience to 112 00:08:20,160 --> 00:08:27,120 allow those rewards to slowly accumulate is essential for returning a profit 113 00:08:24,720 --> 00:08:31,620 especially when Factory in upfront costs and power consumption and you should 114 00:08:28,979 --> 00:08:36,300 factor in the power you feel with a screwdriver from lttstore.com 115 00:08:34,200 --> 00:08:40,020 they're actually very good now it's time to do something with these drives seeing 116 00:08:38,399 --> 00:08:44,580 as we have this much storage on hand let's do it to make just a janky DIY Nas 117 00:08:42,959 --> 00:08:48,300 and compare its price to an off-the-shelf pre-built Mass the key 118 00:08:46,560 --> 00:08:52,920 night among you may have already knows though that we paid more for our 16 119 00:08:50,100 --> 00:08:56,339 terabyte drives than our eight teams so it seems like a good time to note that 120 00:08:54,839 --> 00:09:00,420 we had some time constraints that prevented us from getting the absolute 121 00:08:58,140 --> 00:09:04,260 best bang for a buck on the hard drive namely we wanted to get a variety of 122 00:09:02,399 --> 00:09:08,100 different drives from different Sellers and they had to be able to ship it to us 123 00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:12,779 up in Canada further limiting our choices our best deal was easily the 124 00:09:10,680 --> 00:09:17,519 recertified Seagate drives that came with an 80 Gigabyte per dollar compared 125 00:09:14,940 --> 00:09:22,140 to 50 to 55 gigabytes per dollar brand new that's two used drives for the price 126 00:09:19,440 --> 00:09:25,860 of one and a half brand new and if you happen to need a drive we'll have the 127 00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:29,940 links for both new and used down in the description 128 00:09:27,240 --> 00:09:35,760 oh here we go oh wow that's heavy good old steel chassis assuming we converted 129 00:09:32,700 --> 00:09:38,279 our trustial 69 gaming PC into an ass 130 00:09:35,760 --> 00:09:43,320 and assuming we loaded it with these 16 terabyte seagates which ideally within 131 00:09:41,279 --> 00:09:48,180 the toshiba's if they worked and then you factor in some money for cables and 132 00:09:45,779 --> 00:09:53,399 a hard drive cage we are sitting right around 71 gigabytes per dollar meanwhile 133 00:09:51,420 --> 00:10:00,899 a pre-configured Nas with that much storage space comes in at 134 00:09:56,300 --> 00:10:04,019 1622 meaning 39.5 gigabytes per dollar 135 00:10:00,899 --> 00:10:06,779 what could you do with that extra 720 136 00:10:04,019 --> 00:10:12,420 how about buying another three full hard drives or building a whole other PC not 137 00:10:09,779 --> 00:10:16,860 to mention that the 69 PC can still do all the normal things you expect a PC to 138 00:10:13,920 --> 00:10:21,720 do while a dedicated Nas has a singular purpose but it's not just about spending 139 00:10:19,320 --> 00:10:26,760 Less on your Nas project you can also afford to buy more drives that you can 140 00:10:24,300 --> 00:10:31,380 dedicate to parity for example choosing to go with raid 5 instead of raid 1. 141 00:10:28,980 --> 00:10:37,019 those used drives may be less reliable overall but at some point the extra 142 00:10:34,200 --> 00:10:40,140 redundancy makes it the safer move but there's a few things we haven't touched 143 00:10:38,279 --> 00:10:45,360 on so far with this price discussion sales on new hard drives and shocking 144 00:10:43,140 --> 00:10:49,260 shocking hard drives involves buying a drive generally intended to be used 145 00:10:47,160 --> 00:10:54,839 externally and removing all the unnecessary bits to just get to the 3.5 146 00:10:51,839 --> 00:10:56,760 inch hard drive inside as an example you 147 00:10:54,839 --> 00:11:04,560 could pick up one of these 18 terabyte external WD My Books brand new for 280 148 00:11:00,959 --> 00:11:06,660 per Drive meaning 64 gigabytes per 149 00:11:04,560 --> 00:11:10,620 dollar substantially closer to the cost of a used Drive than to the cost of one 150 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:16,260 that was intended to be used internal all along as for sales on new drives 151 00:11:13,140 --> 00:11:18,420 this is essentially a matter of patience 152 00:11:16,260 --> 00:11:25,220 we've seen the price of a brand new 18 terabyte drive fall as low as 300 a new 153 00:11:22,260 --> 00:11:31,320 16 terabyte drives have gone on sale for 245. again not as cheap as used but it's 154 00:11:29,220 --> 00:11:36,180 got a lot of benefits like a full warranty known history and zero power on 155 00:11:33,899 --> 00:11:41,040 hours with all that said though can I ultimately recommend using used hard 156 00:11:38,220 --> 00:11:45,180 drives it's all going to come down to just your personal Comfort level with 157 00:11:42,899 --> 00:11:50,040 risk if you are storing something easily replaceable like Steam games or media 158 00:11:47,459 --> 00:11:53,640 files you might be pretty excited to get a bunch of capacity or redundancy for 159 00:11:52,200 --> 00:11:58,560 the same amount of money but if you're storing family photos or important 160 00:11:55,800 --> 00:12:03,779 documents well those are worth a heck of a lot more than a game save to most 161 00:12:01,500 --> 00:12:08,360 people and also just use steam Cloud saves and knowing they're on a new Drive 162 00:12:06,180 --> 00:12:12,420 might help you feel more at ease regardless of what drives you end up 163 00:12:10,560 --> 00:12:16,440 with you should have a good one two three backup strategy in place things 164 00:12:14,399 --> 00:12:20,399 three copies of your data on two separate mediums with one stored off 165 00:12:18,180 --> 00:12:23,240 site I personally prefer the one one one 166 00:12:23,540 --> 00:12:30,839 one drive already failing one location 167 00:12:28,500 --> 00:12:35,040 s about risk aren't something we can answer for you it's up to each 168 00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:40,200 individual to decide on their own but for our part yeah it's kind of worth the 169 00:12:37,800 --> 00:12:44,459 risk we've definitely had a bunch of change of opinion on used drives and 170 00:12:42,480 --> 00:12:48,600 we'll be considering them in future want to build calls for the most terabytes 171 00:12:46,560 --> 00:12:52,380 for our dollars just like how this video calls for the most segue to our sponsor 172 00:12:50,639 --> 00:12:55,680 that's it that's your Footwear they're known for being lightweight easy to pack 173 00:12:53,760 --> 00:12:59,040 and most importantly worn by me just joking most importantly they're water 174 00:12:56,820 --> 00:13:03,360 resistant thanks to dimatex technology their everyday move line is designed 175 00:13:01,019 --> 00:13:07,139 with added support at the midsole and better breathability to keep up with 176 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185 00:13:40,260 --> 00:13:44,360 bought some used drops for that one have a great day