Folks list drives for sale, and their asking prices are often close to the price of buying it new.
We do not know if anyone contacts the seller and purchases the drives. So I am wondering about how many of those listings result in a sale? Perhaps the listing price is only the first step in negotiating an agreed sale price?
If a new drive sells for $399, then when all of the negotiating is done, what would a used one typically sell for?
What percentage should a used drive be, below the price of the same drive when brand new?
10% lower? 25% lower? Something else?
Is there an unofficial number that is the sweet spot?
I am talking about drives that are current (not old, retired models).
I would not mind buying used drives. But when I see the asking price, I don’t bother contacting the seller. Am I the exception? Or are a lot of people turned off by the high asking price?
It’s almost an unwritten rule, that if your asking price is plus or minus retail, you’ll get little to no interest. Unfortunately for people listing here, it’s not an auction, and so haggling is cumbersome at best.
I imagine that many listings (who actually give prices, not just "I have these to sell’) are from those who have done minimal exploration of current prices. Rather, their prices are a discount, perhaps, from what they paid, not a reflection of best used pricing.
Everyone wants a deal, and on the other side, not take a bath from what once paid originally, esp. if it is in perfect working condition.
I had been buying used drives almost exclusively when XCH was worth anything significant and I was plotting (sigh…). But to me private sales are too risky for technical items. As far as I’m aware, Ebay is the only seller that will ‘save your a$$’ if the seller refuses to refund, or there are other anomalies in the sale, and you want a refund.
Some, I’m sure, do buy from private sales, but it’s too risky for those who are risk averse, including myself. There are regular and excellent HD prices available, if you are willing to take the time and watch the auctions, and snatch deals as they randomly become available.
I liken it to waiting to win XCH, it happens, you just can’t be impatient.
Hate to tell you, but new 18tbs drives are available for > $100 less than that, shipping included in small quantities (2+). You just gotta look, and you get similar return privileges. I’m still not buying with XCH ~$33.00
My brother and I just bought 9 x 16TB WD Elements (they were actually supposed to be internal drives!) on here just the other week. We paid £11 per TB, I tried to negotiate a slightly cheaper deal, but in the end we agreed the £11 per TB. The seller travelled across London to meet my brother, he then checked all the drives, and paid the guy. The problem was my brother missed one detail, all the drives had a maximum temperature of 69c at some point in their life - the seller had stated they had been in a well ventilated room (we all know USB drives need forced ventilation), but this is one reason I wanted internal drives. We have no come back whatever, so hopefully they’ll be OK.
I’ve also bought used/returned drives from Amazon warehouse, these have been very hit and miss, bought an 18TB once, which was actually 6TB, it even said 6 on the box. All bad ones have been returned OK.
As for how much to pay, well seems £10 / $10 per TB is about the going rate, and perhaps £11 / $11 for the higher capacity drives. Yes I know £10 isn’t $10 but thats rip off Britain for you.
As a final sanity check I check out used prices for sold items on eBay, and use that to gauge what I should be paying. I’ve now maxed out my server, and only have one drive smaller than 10TB, so unless I get a bargain come along I probably won’t be buying more drives for the time being.
I got a batch of 18TB WD H550 on eBay for about $260 each, with 4 years warranty remaining. I think that’s a fair market price, considering amortization rate of 20% per year.
In other words, if you live in USA, you can deduct 1/5 of the original cost you paid for the equipment as amortization for the business. Conveniently, the hdd warranty is exactly 5 years.
So if your hdd lives longer than 5 years, you get free mileage from it. Hyperscalers decommission their drives after about 3 years of use (I cannot confirm this statement). But for hyperscalers the value of non-failing drives is greater than amortization.
Does Western Digital allow transfer of warranty from original owner to new owner?
I am asking, because Western Digital has executive personnel that make policies to deny warranty claims, whenever and however possible.
Seagate is the opposite. They go out of their way to make the warranty process painless. But that does not mean that they allow the warranty to be transferred to a new owner.
Does anyone know how Western Digital and Seagate stand on warranties being transferable?
Bought mine on EBay used and with cracked connector. All they asked me was for a sales receipt and pics, then said send it in under warranty. Then they got it and denied warranty. A few weeks back and forth about the issue, and then they said, one fine day, they were going to do me a special dispensation and honor the warranty replacement. Then lots of nothing for a good while. Finally arrived three months almost to the day I contacted them, well after I said phuck it (and them).
Seagate, I have not used them, have only a couple of their drives, good so far.
I have my first external HDD with bad sectors and performing poorly - it’s a Seagate. Contacted them via the online chat on their website, gave them serial number, they confirmed I could RMA it, offered to have my drive shipped to data recovery centre in the Netherlands (which I have not yet taken up as I am copying plots across to another device now…).
One way or another, it looks like they will be sending me a replacement once they receive the failed one.
Take them up on their data recovery offer.
The data recovery is free (but double check). It is included under your warranty.
Recovering the plots might be worthless to you. But the drive that they will put the recovered plots on is worth it to you.
You get to keep the drive with the recovered data, and you also get a drive as the replacement for your bad drive.
So you send them 1 drive and you get back 2 drives. You get to keep them both.
That is how it worked with me. Verify if that is the case under your drive’s warranty.
And since you have not yet returned the bad drive, see if you can pack it with files (assuming it is not already full). The more that they recover, the larger the capacity of the “data recovery” drive they will send you. If they recover 1 TB, they will send you a 1 TB drive. If they recover 18 TB, they will send you an 18 TB drive (if they have it – with me, and my failed 14 TB drive, they sent me two drives, presumably because they did not have 14 TB drives on-hand).
Point of clarification:
They sent me two “recovery drives”, and they also sent me a 14 TB drive.
The two recovery drives were shipped from their data recovery site, and the 14 TB drive was shipped from their warehouse. The former was in Oklahoma, and the latter was in California.
