Good Advice

So im on the forum every day, i dont post much but i do read alot. Recently someone posted about scrapping something (cant remeber what) and one of the regular posters gave them some advice and said research stuff before you scrap it because you never know if there's a market for it. I took that advice and found a bunch of the HDD's i have are on ebay selling for much better then scrap value. Now i just have to figure out how to test them and im good to go. Thanks to all forum members for the invaluable information obtained on this site.

Check out PartTimeScrapper, he buys and tests hard drives for you.

Why not buy a USB hard drive enclosure kit (or whatever they're called) to test them out? I have one of those with a hard drive from another computer that I use for backing up important files.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...loads/seatools
I think this is one of them that PTS uses on his HD's.
Here's another one you might check out;
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

most hard drive manufacturers have free disk tools available for download from their website. These tools work from floppy or cd drives in DOS. You need if possible a test computer set up on a workbench, or it is possible to use your computer(forget i said that). Just hook the hdd up on your test bench pc and boot to the floppy/cd dos app. It's fairly easy to find your way in to test one, if you get lost just restart and try again. If it's a western digital, use wd tools disk, if maxtor, seagate, etc, use theirs. You can also hook two (ide type) at once and check them both (this comes in handy if you have an off brand but don't have their tools to use, say one's a wd, and one's a fujitsu, but you have no fujitsu tools, the wd will usually test it for you, as long as you're booting with a wd also installed along with the fujitsu) If it won't test in that case, write 0s to the drive, if that completes without errors, it's passed the test

I'm sure that it takes time to run all the auctions and whatnot on ebay so that should probably be taken into consideration before deciding if this is the better route. Also doesn't ebay have a seller reputation or something to that effect that could have an impact on prices/ability to sell items? Is it free to sell things on ebay?

Obviously i don't know that much about it because theses are honest questions

Yes Julie, you have to pay to play on Ebay.

I picked up a USB Harddrive enclosure from Office Max for about $15. But before that I bought an IDE to USB cable from Tigerdirect for about the same price. Lastly I picked up an IDE to Sata Adapter from amazon or eBay for around $3 and now am set up to test just about any style drive.

Julie you may not know much about eBay but you sound very knowledgeable because those are some very important things to consider. I've been selling on eBay for years and years had my account suspended once but managed to beat their system and got back in the game with a new account. You have to have a lot of patience and tolerance to sell on eBay and you must always and I do mean always put the customer first because they will always be right. Ebays fees will eat you alive though, I used to buy and sell cell phones on eBay because it was and still is a hot market but now I just sell simple car parts whenever I can because I pretty much don't pay anything for them so I can afford Ebays fees I think lol.

i hate ebay too, but if you try listing things elsewhere, traffic and sales drop off sharply, if you have any there at all. To use ebay and paypal both will cost about 20%, and this is the worst part, it will cost much more trying to go elsewhere

I played on ebay a bit too, but found it's just too much work for me when there are other things to be working on. I still do it a bit, but mostly for gold recovery items.

This is what I use for hooking up hard drives for testing: http://ca.startech.com/HDD/Adapters/...le~USB2SATAIDE

Works for both ide and sata drives.

Try this for testing"].http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-...4753741&sr=8-1It just plugs into a usb port. Will Work with SATA or IDE and it's only about $9. This is a quick and easy program to use to test the drive http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.js...00dd04090aRCRD.
As for ebay, the first 50 postings have no charge to post your listing. You will be charged 9% of the sale price. Nothing if it does not sell. When I sell hard drives on ebay, I list them as not working for parts or repair unless they test as good. People still buy them at more than scrap. That way my feedback score is high and I am being honest with the buyers. No problems with ebay account.

Stuff I get goes into about 5 categories. Ebay, Craigslist, Garage Sale, Scrap and Donate. Each item is evaluated and best way to move with the least amount of brain damage but most profit, is determined. When figuring a Craigslist price often times I will guesstimate what I think it will bring on Ebay and deduct 25%.

Make that 6 categories...Last one being, Things I think I can trade PTS to for lunch.

For those who Ebay alot, there is a software called Garage Sale (in the app store for all Mac users). The software is absolutely amazing and easy to use. It saves an endless amount of time (and fees too) and the best part is, you don't even need to go to ebay.com to upload your listings. See this vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii2kqUleN4I

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Originally Posted by devo

I played on ebay a bit too, but found it's just too much work for me when there are other things to be working on. I still do it a bit, but mostly for gold recovery items.

This is what I use for hooking up hard drives for testing: http://ca.startech.com/HDD/Adapters/...le~USB2SATAIDE

Works for both ide and sata drives.

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cool! does it get full speed and plenty of juice through the usb ?

It has a separate power supply, so no issues with pulling the usb too low. I love it because it has the adapters for 2.5 drives and sata drives as well. It also plays nicely with linux if you have a problem drive that you need to do a recovery on. That's the reason I originally bough it, I needed to recover data from a bad laptop hard drive. Worked like a champ.

yeah devo, that laptop drive adapter would be handy too

I just got one of those on eBay for $8 and another adapter without power supply for $4. I tried a splitter for the power with no luck. next step is to build an enclosure with a 10 port usb hub and computer power supply loaded with the adapters. I will put individual power switches on each so o can 'hot swap'. couple that with the ultimate boot cd tools and you have the ultimate disk wiper/cloner for about $50. portable, too since you would be able to plug it in to a laptop. or maybe build a laptop into the case, too and have an all-un-one unit.

i have a couple of old power supplies that came out of cd library units and have 10 power plugs