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Summary
Need a lot of storage for cheap?
Buy a refurbished hard drive instead of a new oneyou could save yourself hundreds.
Here’s what you oughta know about used hard drives and where to buy them.
Lucas Gouveia / Corbin Davenport / How-To Geek
Why Buy a Hard Drive Instead of a Solid-State Drive?
Foremost among these is cost.
Conventional hard drives are also better than SSDs for long-term “cold” storage.
In this case, cold doesn’t really refer to temperature.
It just means that the drive will be kept off until the data is needed.
If they’re not noticeably cheaper, you should stay awaysomething is amiss.
Professionally refurbished drives can be quite reliable, and will likely last you for years.
But how do you know a refurbished drive you buy is legit?
You have to buy from a reputable dealer.
Where Should You Buy Refurbished Hard Drives?
Since they deal in enterprise equipment, they sell both SATA and SAS hard drives.
They sell manufacturer recertified drives and seller refurbished drives.
Seller refurbs tend to be a little cheaper.
How Long Do Refurbished Hard Drives Last?
That means you should probably pass on that suspect random drive you find sitting at a local yard sale.
Drives that fail early typically do so because of manufacturing defects of some kind.
Of course, there are no real guarantees with these things.
A drive can die at any time and without warning.
You should alwaysmake multiple backupsof important data and store those backups in different locations to ensure
