Recertified Hard Drives?

[neurosis]

Anyone tried to use or have experience with re-certified hard drives? 

I know that some of these things get used in data-centers and are swapped out religiously, re-certified, and then sold with the same warranty (or close) as new drives. More often than not, these drives are NAS capable drives.

I've been spending a lot of time on a couple of Home Lab forums recently and some of the people on those forums swear by the drives, even saying that they are as good as, or better than new.

I'm thinking about picking up a couple of large (20tb) drives for backup.

I'm also building a DIY NAS but won't be trusting used drives for the raid arrays until I have more experience with them.

 

[gcode]

What is OrangeManBad's position on recertified drives?   
I'll need to check before I can give you my opinion.

Seriously though, 

who's doing the certifying?
the manufacturer?
the people trying to sell them?
what is the price difference between new drivers and recertified drives?

[Jeff]

I just can't fathom the idea of a recertified hard drive.
Mostly because it's a new concept for me.
But if a bunch of people swear by it and the price is right I'd dip my toe in the water.

[Newbeeee™]

Are we looking at new bearings....those platters have already done a lot of round and round and round and round....

[gcode]

Speaking of hard drives

SAMSUNG 990 PRO Heatsink SSD 4TB, NVMe

$290 on Amazon.

[neurosis]

Seriously though, 

who's doing the certifying?
the manufacturer?
the people trying to sell them?
what is the price difference between new drivers and recertified drives?

You can get them either way. Usually if they are seller re-certified, they don't come with as long of a warranty, but they are a LOT cheaper.  The mfg re-certified come with a great warranty and are about 1/2 the price of a new drive depending on the drive.

[neurosis]

I just can't fathom the idea of a recertified hard drive.
Mostly because it's a new concept for me.
But if a bunch of people swear by it and the price is right I'd dip my toe in the water.

That's what I'm having a hard time with. I would have never considered purchasing a re-certified drive. But then I see people asking with others are spending so much money for storage space when they could be buying these re-certs. 

The drives aren't your typical home grade hard drive. These are drives made to be run in data-centers so are built to take abuse.  From what I understand, they can be sent back to the mfg for minor issues and would still have to be labeled re-cert even if they've never been used.

I'm still skeptical. I have an external backup drive that I use for weekly backups and if I do roll the dice, I would be using the drive to back up the backup. 

[neurosis]

Are we looking at new bearings....those platters have already done a lot of round and round and round and round....

Some of these drives have an MTBF of 2,500,000 hours. I'm pretty sure that most use hydrodynamic bearings and have a pretty low bearing failure rate.

[Newbeeee™]

Some of these drives have an MTBF of 2,500,000 hours. I'm pretty sure that most use hydrodynamic bearings and have a pretty low bearing failure rate.

Different fish - I didn't know exactly what you are looking at.
All said, it never ceases to amaze me how reliable a standard PC hardrive is....

[neurosis]

Different fish - I didn't know exactly what you are looking at.
All said, it never ceases to amaze me how reliable a standard PC hardrive is....

I have NAS drives at home that have failed after a year and home grade drives that I've been using for at least a decade.  

That's probably why I'm gun shy when it comes to hard drives.   lol.

[SuperHoneyBadger]

I think the re-certs are suck it and see. The homelab forums and reddit will have the most available information, biggest sample size you'll get.

Whatever drive you look at, look it up on the backblaze HDD database for peace of mind!

Are you going with a server chassis for your NAS? I would highly recommend SAS drives for your array, most reliable HDDs I've seen. I have 2 machines up and running, and the one with SAS is absolutely incredible. Built like a tank, 2x 3TB in RAID1, writes at 70-100 mb/s internal transfer speeds and is 12 years old, every other HDD I have caps at 20 mb/s on a good day. This is in an HP Z820, 8 SAS ports on the RAID controller, gobs of RAM, and dual Xeons. A server that's a few years old will have incredible performance per dollar.

[neurosis]

Are you going with a server chassis for your NAS?

No, this is somewhat of a budget build, hence the re-certified drives.

I am using a LSI SAS 9300-8i HBA for the added drives.  My mobo only has 6 sata ports and I have 10 drives.

If I do this again in the future I may go a different route but I'll build over time so I have more time to think it through and search for hardware that I want vs what I can afford.

[SuperHoneyBadger]

Nothing bad to say about LSI controllers, I only have experience with the onboard ones, but I have no doubt the expansion style card will be a performer

[Newbeeee™]

and home grade drives that I've been using for at least a decade

Yep me too.
Round and Round and Round and Round....4200 rpm :dizzy:
 
 

[CNCAppsJames]

Speaking of hard drives

SAMSUNG 990 PRO Heatsink SSD 4TB, NVMe

$290 on Amazon.

I just got a new 4TB 990 PRO for $235... not heatsink model because it's in my laptop.

Fresh Windows install and runs like new. It had been almost 2 years since fresh installs of everything. I try to do it every year. That way I know iff my computer is really too slow or there's an O/S problem.