I want to buy 4 pieces of 6TB or 8TB HDDs, and preferably a quieter one like an Exos X14/7E8 variant. The US ebay prices seem really enticing to order, even with the shipping costs, but I’m really doubtful that the final checkout price contains the VAT costs as well.
(www.ebay.com/itm/296751917547)
Do you perhaps know some cheap european reseller alternative or deny my belief on Ebay not showing a VAT inclusive price at the checkout?
just_another_person@lemmy.world 6 days ago
There’s lots of shady things happening in the HDD resale space, so be weary. Most of what gets resold are datacenter drives that have hit a max number of hours and are pulled on that alone. Not because they aren’t still working, but because they don’t want to risk it. This number varies from place to place, and is only a preventative measure to pull them from service before they fail.
That being said… understand that this is likely what you’re likely buying.
For the shady bits: resellers frequently pull some tricks to obfuscate the real state of the drives including:
All of this culminating inna real grab bag of things you probably don’t want to mess with. If you were buying, say, 10 drives to host a bunch of junk you don’t care about, it may be worth the risk. Otherwise, read what I said above and understood what you’re likely to get.
If you just want cheaper than retail drives, get factory refurbished drives directly from the manufacturer that carry a warranty. You’ll feel better about it.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 6 days ago
That wasn’t what was reported, and is largely false. What was reported is that people are buying new drives which have FARM values indicating years of use. Also the most likely cause being a crypto project going under, and dropping petabytes in capacity over the last 12 months.
This type of fraud hasn’t been proven in the used HDD space. There are many reasons used drives are sold other than exceeding usable life or warranty. Companies over forecast capacity or simply go bankrupt all the time (see crypto / ai), and those drives are sold. Considering drives are 30-50% more expensive now than they were 6-12 months ago the incentive and profitability of resale has increased.
just_another_person@lemmy.world 6 days ago
No…you’re talking about news from the past few weeks. I’m talking about the reseller market in general and the way it behaves.
Source: adjacent industry experience dealing with these people.
Moreover, the article you’re referencing has nothing to do with what I posted, so not even sure why you’re talking about it here. There is zero correlation with what I said, you just assumed that was what I was referencing because… I’m not sure.
PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
Oh that definitely seem possible but I would assume going with a trusted seller with a warranty like goharddrive and serverpartdeal must be a safer choice in this regard.
just_another_person@lemmy.world 6 days ago
If it’s coming from eBay, or doesn’t have a warranty, don’t trust it. If those that you mention have a warranty, then you’re hopefully covered in those terms.