What are you guys doing with Hard drives for maximum return - Page 2

Originally Posted by matador

Please let us know what you do with these. If you go the greater than scrap route, I'd be interested to see a pass/fail ratio. Most of what I see hovers around 65-75 percent. Numbers are always interesting to me.

I think a lot of the pass/fail ratio depends on your standards,your source material, and what the average customer is looking for.



Almost all of my stuff is stuff that's currently being pulled from the waste stream. I see a lot of IDE drives with capacities under 120 gb. Many would still pass a SMART test but it's obsolete tech. I see some SATA drives but many are older & smaller capacity.

Really .... you need a 250 GB SATA with a speed of 3gb/sec to keep up with a top end core two duo with maximum memory installed otherwise you can create a bottleneck at the hard drive. Those pagefile & hiberfil system files can get pretty large.

My personal opinion is that 1 TB is an absurdly large hard drive but your average customer is of the mindset that bigger is better. They are looking for a big hard drive with all kinds of RAM.

Size matters !

Some times old and small are what is needed(not often). I have had some success selling the small old ones myself. I have a theory that some old industrial machines are being repaired and are set up for the old drives. Well just my theory. Mike

Originally Posted by BRASSCATCHER

Best case scenario you find a buyer close to you. That takes out of the equation shipping costs. It also takes out the chance that the drive get damaged in transit since we all know how well usps, ups and fed ex sometimes handle packages, unless they are insured and then they get special attention. If they get bounced, dropped and thrown around there is a good chance some of those drives are going to be scrap after testing. I know I have sent drives that I know were working and when they got to buyer only 1 out of 10 was good.

Now whether is was due to shipping damage or another reason its the last time I shipped drives.

Yeah if you just throw drives in a box your taking a gamble on them getting to any buyer in good working order. On a side note though. just cause they power up doesnt make them good either. If they have bad sectors or SMART errors They are not resell worthy. Heck I even have to refund money for drives after i ship them after testing cause they get damaged in shipping.

Originally Posted by Scrappah

Totally agree ! A 40 GB IDE is plenty enough for my shop computers. Anything larger than that is a PITA because the larger drives are more time consuming to do regular maintenance & upkeep on.

I think it all depends on what sells. You see job lots of 4 - 10 .... 80 GB sata drives on e-bay. It's awesome if somebody out there is buying and a seller is making profit.

The thing is that the technology is always moving forward and the landscape is changing from month to month. What's desirable today is obsolete tomorrow. You've got to stay ahead of the curve. If you're a re-seller you have to be mindful that your stock has a definite shelf life.

It would be too easy to invest time & money into stock that you ultimately end up having to scrap out because it stopped moving.

As a buyer here this is so true. I have over 200 IDE drives in stock right now that just dont sell on ebay anymore. Going to end up scrapping them for a loss. But when in business you have to take the losses and move on.