Hello,

Bought a spare super cheap used 3TB drive a year ago, and just figured out it’s not a SATA but a SAS drive.

How fucked am I? What can I do more than using it as a paperweight?

Cheers!

  • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
    10·
    2 months ago

    I don’t know where you live but I got the drive for 30€ including shipping, a new drive is over 100€…

    • Maalus@lemmy.world
      10·
      2 months ago

      And then two years down the line you lose all the data - the pictures, the savegames, the porn collection. Drives are the one thing that shouldn’t be bought used

      • randombullet@programming.dev
        11·
        2 months ago

        Not if you have a proper backup plan.

        I have about 200ish TB or about 24 drives and 3 of them failed all are used. I have a solid backup plan so no issues with failing drives. Saves me roughly 100-200 a drive.

        New drives have infant mortality as well. An inverse bell curve would be the distribution.

      • thawed_caveman@lemmy.world
        5·
        2 months ago

        Look, i’m buying two hard drives no matter what to anticipate a drive failure. In that case, if i’m anticipating a failure anyway, might as well buy them second-hand and, yes, save a ton of money.

        The key is to look for a CrystalDiskInfo screenshot in the ad, which is indicative of a serious seller and also lets you know the drive’s condition. If you buy from a professional, you may get a warranty.

      • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
        4·
        2 months ago

        I learned the hard way when the cheap PSU blew up and took with it the mobo, my drive and my backup drive. That was the year 2000 or 2001.

        Since then I do have a good backup strategy (with most important stuff on amazon glacier).

        So you learned the hard way losing your porn stash 😉 ?

        Jk, and the drive is not for important stuff.

        • Klear@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 months ago

          PSU you is the other part you don’t want to cheap out on… Guess you got two lessons in one there.

          • Maalus@lemmy.world
            3·
            2 months ago

            A lot of people learn this lesson sadly. It isn’t “sexy” to brag that you have a gold / platinum rated high quality PSU. People would rather add a “Ti” or a “10” to their graphics card and then lose it all when it goes. Same reason why I have an UPS for home PC - sure, overvoltage, undervoltage, electrical noise probably won’t harm the PC. But why risk it? Also having a battery to save your shit, or buy more electricity online when you run out on a prepaid meter is cool (speaking from experience, happened to me like 10 times already lol)

            • Chee_Koala@lemmy.world
              1·
              2 months ago

              I never heard about pre paid electric meters for homes. May I ask where you are located? Small UPS seems like the frickin perfect addon to that situation!

          • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
            2·
            2 months ago

            Yeah, for sure. To be totally fair I probably got even more lessons out of it as I upgraded my SOs Duron 650 to an Athlon (so new mobo) and that was what blew up the chep PSU I guess…

            Usually I now go 750-900w platinum just because it’s so nice when the fan doesn’t start before 400 watts (and it heats less ofc).

      • Vivendi@lemmy.zip
        3·
        2 months ago

        I salvaged an 18 year old WD hard disk from a pentium IV system.

        It works to this day in my retro gaming machine lol

      • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        bullshit. drives should be backed up if the data is important which makes refurb and used drives perfectly acceptable. raid and good backups exists for a reason and don’t leave you to rely on one single drive to live forever.

        if you’re buying large drives and not using a system with raid functionality, you’re setting yourself up for failure, new drive or not. no crying you were warned.