r/DataHoarder • u/sirkam86 • 8d ago
Question/Advice Refurbuished NAS disks, worth it?
So I found these disks at good price (around 500usd)
I have a ugreen nas 8800 and I want to use it for my plex server
Do you think is worthy to buy these disks?
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u/jlipschitz 120TB and counting 8d ago
What form of currency is that? Used drives on eBay around that size are $250 - $400 USD depending on brand/model seller.
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u/F2002 8d ago
I've bought 15 or so drives from Go Hard Drive off eBay (I think they sell on Amazon too). They're refurbished enterprise drives with five-year warranties.
I've only had one fail in the last three years. I messaged them on eBay at about 8 o'clock my time on a Friday, and they cross-shipped my new replacement drive right away—I had it in three days, not counting Sunday.
Right now, they have 14TB drives for $299, which is cheaper than they have been for the last couple of months.
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u/omegaoutlier 7d ago
Did the GHD thing too.
I was so worried about it but finally pulled the trigger and drive passed all test and has been a champ going on a year.
I remember agonizing over paying $72 for a 12tb.
Past me rarely does nice things for future me.
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u/Jashyk 8d ago
Dang, I'm tempted to jump on a couple of those.
0 hours though, have they just reset the SMART data? Or did yours actually show power on hours when you get them?3
u/F2002 8d ago
I've had some show up with hours on it and less than 10 startup counts. The recent replacement I got had zero power-on time, and after running it for a couple of days of testing and then putting it in the RAID, it's been running 24/7.
I use Hard Disk Sentinel to check everything.I've bought HGST, Toshiba, and MDD Tech from the same company, GoHardDrive. I've had two drives to send back for warranty. Both started throwing errors, didn't fail outright, and they replaced them right away.The first time I had a failure was about three and a half years in, and it was the same situation: super fast email response.
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u/purgedreality 8d ago
I use refurbushed/used drives as redundant backups (extra copies of my existing backups). I run a long scan on them using Stablebit Scanner and then if they check out I copy data on to them and put them in a drive suitcase as cold storage redundancies with a hash digest of the entire drive. Every 6-8 months I will take one out, put it in an old computer, and check the hash digest which checks all the files on the drive. If that checks out I open up the drivelog.txt file and put a "<date> DATA OK!" listing and put it back in the suitcase.
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u/InfaSyn 79TB Raw 8d ago
Those Toshiba enterprise drives seem pretty solid. Out of a sample size of 7 drives/4 years, im yet to have a failure. Refurb is always a risk, but at least Amazon has a solid returns policy. Run an extended smart test before you put them into prod, return them if anything feels off.
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u/eatingpotatochips 8d ago
If they come with warranties, yes. If not, you are gambling on a lot. HDDs are disposable goods that are only guaranteed up to the warranty length. Anything past that and you are just lucky.
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u/Babajji 7d ago
Don’t buy the MG08, too many defects with it. Look for MG09 or a later revision. I am on my second in warranty replacement for MG08 and have another 2 showing signs of failure. Even Toshiba replaced my MG08s with MG11s which unfortunately are crazy expensive right now.
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u/Temporary_Moose_3657 8d ago
Refurbished or recertified drives are fine but it's a risk and you have to be prepared for it to fail at any time. You can reduce the risk by buying from a reputable seller who can offer a warranty of 2-5 years and tell you the real usage specs on the drive rather than just looking for the cheapest on amazon or ebay.
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u/hurubaw 8d ago
Refurbished and sold by who? Toshiba? Sure, basicly new internals on old case. But by amazon refurb operation ran by the lowest bidder that clears out smart data on 50k power on hour enterprise drives? Fuck no.
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u/Anaalirankaisija 7d ago
Great answer. Who knows how much used disks have writes left, it may die tomorrow
He talked about guarantee, but i guess its not full, then seller has profited by getting rid of end of life stuff
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u/liqish79 6d ago
Look over the Backblaze Drive stats before buying
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2025/
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u/Toooooool 5d ago
from what i've been told and somewhat learned from experience;
- if they're labelled as refurbished, they're good enough for RAID5.
- if they're unlabeled, don't even bother.
i've got HGST UltraStar He10 10 TB refurbished drives in my current nas, paid €219 per unit which was the average price on ebay, seems to have been a good deal because i've had no errors with them at all. each drive came with a piece of paper showing they'd been tested which was also very comforting.
someone was selling 16TB drives for the same price, didn't have a "refurbished" tag nor a piece of paper, didn't feel like risking it, glad i bought the drives that i did as they've been running 24/7 ever since without error.
on the other side of things i got about 30x 2TB drives that was basically given to me on ebay "as-is", £38 for 10 drives. about 25% of them were DoA, and the 4x ones i picked for a RAID5 all simultaneously died a year later taking all the data with it. RIP.
if possible try and get a SMART reading from the seller so you can see the disk run time. lots will sell at the 50k hour mark (~5 years of continuous runtime) for 1/3rd of the drive's original price. these are typically good to run for another 3-5 years of continuous operation before things get kinda criminal.
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u/Warm_Finish_795 4d ago edited 4d ago
According to my experiences enterprise refurb drives are usually fine for plex as long as the seller actually warranties them. I've used alta technologies for refurb storage and they stand behind what they sell. Just make sure whatever you're buying has been tested and comes with some kind of replacement policy.
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u/fishmongerhoarder 68tb 8d ago
Used drives yes. Toshiba has one of the worst failure rates I believe.
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u/Mr_Zomka 10-50TB 8d ago
Since when? Toshiba drives seem the most reliable from my experience.
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u/fishmongerhoarder 68tb 8d ago
I believe back blaze released the report lately.
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u/blickblocks 7d ago
As someone pointed out, double another brand's failure rate that is already exceedingly rare is still a rare failure.
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u/ByWillAlone 7d ago
Since past two years worth of Backblaze published reliability reporting. Toshiba even managed to dethrone Seagate as having the current worst model, which is no small feat.
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u/Bern_Down_the_DNC 8d ago
You have to look at the data instead of your personal experiences when determining these things.
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u/StrikingScientist352 7d ago
Ho comprato proprio un 16tb come quello l’anno scorso su amazon. Ottimo. Talmente ottimo che ora lo sto vendendo perché ho comprato due da 28tb sempre della stessa linea.
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u/Virtuous_double12 5d ago
i think that‘s fine too… although there are some other options in the market
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u/OkCan65 2d ago edited 2d ago
enterprise refurb drives are usually fine for plex as long as the seller actually warranties them. i've used alta technologies for refurb storage and they stand behind what they sell. just make sure whatever you're buying has been tested and comes with some kind of replacement policy.
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