What are the non-homelab use cases for these used drives? I see folks buying tons and assume they are using them in a business scenario? I've never bought used drives for an enterprise scenario, but I guess it all depends on use case, budget and how you configure/store/backup your important data.
[Update: Seller Complaints Accumulating] HGST Ultrastar He10 - 10TB @ $129.95
- Thread starter ArthurA
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We use them in our off-site backup setups in an enterprise senario. Our sites have moved to full solar+Tesla battery backups so power is not an issue as it is in the datacenter. All of our primary servers run brand new EXOS SAS drives, using the cheaper used drives allows us to maintain two separate off-site backups with one acting as a mirror/failover for less than the cost of using brand new EXOS drives for a single off-site backup. We have found about a 1-1.5% failure rate in the first year with the EXOS drives so 3.5% for the used drives at less than a third of the cost is an acceptable tradeoff for us. With the use of multiple hotspares and the ability to replace the failed drives in minutes to an hour it has been well worth the savings.
As far as data is concerned there is no difference between SATA and SAS drives. I prefer SAS drives because they're faster and because they don't fail as often. Did I mention they're cheaper when bought used?