Used laptop drives - yay or nay ?

[wearetheborg]

I need to get a laptop drive for a laptop. Size/speed is not imp.
So, I can either go with a used laptop drive off ebay, or buy a new one.
I do value warranty (I can live without it, but I give value to it).

I was considering getting a 80GB or so 5400 rpm used for about $30.
For new it would be 250Gb 5400 rpm for about $95

If I get used, I can wait more for HDD prices to drop. Eventually I' get a new one (say 500GB drive).

So, should I go with a new drive or a used one ?

[gator]

Depends on how soon you want one and what your budget is. I have bought used drives from the forum marketplace and have not had a problem. ebay is a hit-or-miss for HDDs, it is your call.

[Paul Pavlik]

I bought 2 60gb SATA Drives off eBay and both are problem free. Both were "New Computer take-outs from computers that were up-graded".

[RealBlackStuff]

If you look around on eBay, you can get some real bargains.
Bought some 2.5" HDs recently that were practically brand new.
They came from a government order, where all the HDs from NEW laptops were replaced with larger ones, before being passed on to employees (similar to the above post).
All of these HDs were in perfect condition and each had less than 2 hours use on them! (reading out the S.M.A.R.T. details)

[ArtShapiro]

each had less than 2 hours use on them! (reading out the S.M.A.R.T. details)

I'm not sure how to ascertain that information. Can you pontificate for a moment?

Art

[rkawakami]

Art,

I believe that RBS is referring to this freeware (personal use) program:

http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm

Note: The "Download now!" button is for Windows 2000 or newer. Scroll down for a link for the Win98 and ME version.

The drive(s) in the system are identified at the top of the DiskCheckup screen. You click on one of them and then click the "SMART Info" tab. Under the "Raw Value" column at line ID #9, is the "Power On Time", which I believe to be in hours. Note that since this is a Windows program, the drive will need to be made accessable by Windows (via Computer Management/Disk Management, assuming Windows XP). In other words, if the drive is un-formatted you will need to initialize it before being able to read the SMART data. I have noted that sometimes some of the other data fields appears "weird". Not sure if that's because the drive doesn't support all of the SMART parameters or there's a bug in the program.

edit: Here's some other links which might shed some light on the SMART system and its attributes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monit ... Technology
http://www.ntfs.com/disk-monitor-smart-attributes.htm
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6983