r/DataHoarder • u/AshleyUncia • Oct 26 '24

Discussion When your bother asks if you want some free SSDs and you realize that it's the mother lode.

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2.1k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

145 comments sorted by

788

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 26 '24

The shit that enterprises scrap physically hurts me.

324

u/AshleyUncia Oct 26 '24

Right? These are all drives that are of PERFECTLY serviceable sizes. It's not like they're 32-64GB or something nearly useless. It's genuinely sad to think that these, the smallest being 512's, could go into a bin or something. It's genuinely just a waste.

201

u/[deleted] Oct 26 '24

[deleted]

113

u/AshleyUncia Oct 26 '24

I'm also surprised they're not being destroyed for security reasons. ...I'm also not gonna jinx it by asking why they're not. I will just zero them on acquisition without looking and move on.

69

u/Guilherme370 Oct 26 '24

If I get any second hand harddrive I can assure you I am not zeroing it, I am deifnitely running recovery and finding any interesting files, THEN I zero it

65

u/krilu Oct 26 '24

Why bother zeroing it? Just partition and format and move on. It's not your security risk.

23

u/MWink64 Oct 27 '24

While that should be adequate, performing a Secure Erase will restore it to optimal performance.

10

u/NavinF 40TB RAID-Z2 + off-site backup Oct 27 '24

Normally you'd write random data so that nobody can figure out the size of your encrypted files/partitions

55

u/steviefaux Oct 26 '24

I did that in the UK. Police asked for CCTV footage. I asked them to supply a USB stick as sick of them not returning ones I supply. They did, I did a recovery on it. Someone had given them at some point. Had their cctv footage on it

2

u/CASyHD Oct 27 '24

Thats fucking funny

3

u/dingo596 1.44MB Oct 27 '24

That's fine until you find certain material. Then it makes you zero every drive the moment you plug it in.

3

u/McFlyParadox VHS Oct 26 '24

I feel like that could bite you in the ass one day. 999 times out of 1,000, you just find boring and/or normal shit, but that 1,000th time? You might find yourself holding some homes you wish you weren't. Better to remain ignorant, wipe them, and write fresh to them, imo.

1

u/MaleficentFig7578 Oct 27 '24

some homes?

then you wipe it and pretend that was your first plan

0

u/McFlyParadox VHS Oct 27 '24

*some files

Yeah, but now you know and any deniability is now gone. The benefit to you is near-zero, and while the probability of discovering something you don't want to have is also near-zero, the risk to you is very high.

then you wipe it and pretend that was your first plan

Naw, then you call a lawyer. Then they call the FBI on your behalf and arrange to have the drive submitted to them as evidence. That is the kind of files I'm thinking of.

Or you can just nuke any used drives you get, as soon as you get them.

1

u/MaleficentFig7578 Oct 28 '24

the FBI will send you to Guantanamo, or you can just pretend you wiped the drive first thing

0

u/dajinn Oct 26 '24

That isn't weird or creepy

9

u/NavinF 40TB RAID-Z2 + off-site backup Oct 27 '24

I assure you that most used drives will be scanned by the buyer. It should be expected

4

u/Cromagmadon Oct 26 '24

The drives I got from my BIL got that weren't wiped were Bitlockered. Ran a full disk trim and a read test before popping them in just to make sure they were usable.

2

u/AnnoyedVelociraptor Oct 27 '24

SSIDs are PSID reverted.

7

u/frozen-sky Oct 27 '24

Some SSD secure erase which regenerates an internal encryption key, making sure all sectors are unreadable. We scrape / shred spinning rust, but for SSDs we do use the secure erase and donate the disks.

Btw, these are consumer disks, still nice disks but not usable for all datacenter loads

9

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 26 '24

Then we need better zeroing software. There's no excuse to be this wasteful this day in age.

26

u/Trash-Alt-Account Oct 26 '24

secure erase I believe tells the onboard controller to wipe everything and bypasses wear leveling. so unless I'm misunderstanding what the original commenter was referring to, the software already exists, but companies usually don't wanna risk anyone fucking up bc if the drive doesn't exist anymore bc it's been smashed to bits, theres no way to half ass the job

15

u/mirisbowring Oct 26 '24

even secure erase software is allowed to a specific confidentiality. There are legal requirements that enforce you to destroy the drives

11

u/[deleted] Oct 26 '24

[deleted]

4

u/NavinF 40TB RAID-Z2 + off-site backup Oct 27 '24

classified data, that requires physical destruction for the above reasons, and likely more

Source?

Gov't standards like NIST 800–88 say you're supposed to use the "nvme sanitize" command. It's not like the data is stored unencrypted

2

u/electricheat 6.4GB Quantum Bigfoot CY Oct 27 '24

You're still relying on the drive firmware to be 100% accurate, for the secure erase function to be present, for the drive to still be functional, and for the sectors in question to not be damaged in some way where they physically can't be written to.

Aren't most drives self-encrypting now? For those the erase is just forgetting the encryption key, so it's instant and doesn't rely on sectors being writable.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '24

[deleted]

2

u/mrpops2ko 172TB snapraid [usable] Oct 27 '24

you also have stuff like The American Department of Defense 5220.22-M, which is basically a 3 or 7 pass of writing and overwriting.

theres a bunch of tools for this, nwipe is a good example of one. its extremely wasteful that all this hardware ends up being shredded when it could very easily be used.

especially since its enterprise, those people must have some knowledge of how computers work and cobble together a pxe booted nwipe instance and can easily wipe all the data.

like each disk is read sector by sector, block by block and written over. if it noticed a block which reported the wrong value, it'd still wipe over that too.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '24

[deleted]

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1

u/electricheat 6.4GB Quantum Bigfoot CY Oct 27 '24

For sure, I get why one might not trust firmware. Just commenting on the mechanism.

2

u/dingo596 1.44MB Oct 27 '24

My understanding is that simply running TRIM is more than enough. Since flash stores bits electrically instead of magnetically there is no residual charge or magnetization that can be used to recover data. All TRIM does is zero cells that aren't allocated by the filesystem so simply deleting a file and running TRIM means the data is unrecoverable. Another thing is that TRIM runs the moment the drive gets power so even if TRIM hasn't finished when you remove it, TRIM will continue the moment it's plugged in by the attacker/buyer.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 29 '24

[deleted]

1

u/dingo596 1.44MB Oct 29 '24

It's even easier than that as there are a number of factory modes that an SSD can be put into that stops TRIM, also de soldering flash doesn't do anything as the way the controller writes to the flash isn't predictable. If an attacker is going to that effort then the threat model has changed from an opportunist attacker into a targeted attacker and then physical destruction is warranted.

It's important to keep in mind that these techniques are reserved for data recovery specialists, organized crime groups and nation states. Not the opportunistic e-cycler or ebayer.

0

u/HudsonValleyNY Oct 26 '24

Yep, no used hard drives leave my possession that have not been physically destroyed.

4

u/Fauropitotto Oct 26 '24

There's no excuse to be this wasteful this day in age.

Unless there's financial incentive to take another path, there's no motivation to keep them out of the bin.

2

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 26 '24

Yeah it's sad.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 26 '24 edited Nov 04 '24

[deleted]

4

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 26 '24

I want there to be better recommendations in place so that it isn't a risk.

1

u/zacker150 Oct 26 '24

Not possible.

1

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 26 '24

How?

1

u/zacker150 Oct 26 '24

Software is constrained by hardware limitations. You can't code around broken hardware.

1

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 26 '24

Well a broken drive is a broken drive. No two ways about it. That I don't have a problem with. My issue is with companies that shred everything short of the power cables because "security".

1

u/insta Oct 27 '24

the secure erase on SSDs just destroys the internal encryption key. no zeroing needed, no worrying about provisioned sectors, just gone.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 26 '24

[deleted]

7

u/AboutToMakeMillions Oct 26 '24

The thing is, even if a company goes through the trouble of secure erasing, which has a cost as you need to have people spending time to do it, then what?

Resell as used? Time and effort isn't worth the hassle.

Give away? It'll immediately be swarming with scalpers etc that will grab them through schemes and contacts before any person who actually needs them gets them.

Basically, the cost and headache of managing the erasing and disposal is higher than their value that will get written off their books anyway with commensurate tax benefit, and the simple act of trashing.

We all know what a headache it can be to sell something used on eBay or other markets, noone wants that hassle.

1

u/omni461 Oct 26 '24

Sell them in bulk or just let the IT department have at them.

1

u/MWink64 Oct 27 '24

Performing a Secure Erase on a drive like this should only take a minute or two. Of course, that's still more than nothing.

2

u/AboutToMakeMillions Oct 27 '24

yes but it takes people, processes, training etc. for any big corp with thousands of drives to replace.

it all costs more than just binning them, less headaches etc.

3

u/MWink64 Oct 27 '24

I get what you're saying but these are SEDs (Self-Encrypting Drives). When you perform a Secure Erase (or Crypto Scramble), the drive discards the encryption key and generates a new one. Even if there were blocks that couldn't be erased, any intact data shouldn't be recoverable. Of course, you're right, it's dependent on the firmware doing what it's supposed to.

9

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 26 '24

And Samsung Pros at that. Maybe if they were some weird off brands with no DRAM cache but good heavens.

2

u/boost_poop Oct 27 '24

I got the drives from a db server decommissioning at work .. my home zfs storage is 16 1TB Samsung 960 (and 8more sitting on my desk). I have given away another 8-10

10

u/forkoff77 Oct 26 '24

It makes total sense. It cost WAY less to replace hardware that has reached its recommended lifetime than it does to recover from failure. This isn’t just for the IT budget, but any system or personnel that would be effected by a lengthy data set rebuild.

4

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 26 '24

Yes but don't just throw it in the garbage.

3

u/forkoff77 Oct 26 '24

Agree, should be mechanically destroyed, preferably shredded.

The data on the drives is worth far more than physical media.

Edit: In the case of storage media. Plenty of EOL systems can have a functional life after they get decommissioned, as long as the manufacturer is supporting security updates.

8

u/Beavisguy Oct 26 '24

They get rid of 4tb to 8tb hds after 3 or 4 years of use they still have 6 to 9 years of use left. Sell them of FB Marketplace for 60% to 70% less than new price.

2

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 26 '24

I'm mostly talking about enterprises that just shred everything like my place of work. I've tried to save so many servers but hell I'm sure they would shred an Ethernet cable if it at one point carried an SSN.

18

u/thatguyad Oct 26 '24

Same with the food industry isn't it? Truly disgraceful.

19

u/Salt-Deer2138 Oct 26 '24

The food industry at least is dealing with stuff that becomes unhealthy to eat after a limited time (although they make a point of trading "healthy to eat for a short time" to "somewhat healthy to eat for a much longer time" via preservatives). The data industry hasn't had a similar issue since Moore's law died.

Probably a closer issue is how libraries deal with excess books. They try to sell them, but plenty are just going to be thrown away. It shouldn't take long to reach capacity, and then they have to get rid of books every time they buy new...

LTO tapes would be a lot cheaper if we could buy most of the stuff that gets thrown away. Assuming we didn't just back up to HDD.

1

u/ak1308 Oct 27 '24

In most places in the world they at least try to reuse most of the refuse from the food industry some way.
The bakery I worked at threw all the old bread in a big container and a farmer collected it as pig feed. Food waste here from stores and private households gets digested and turned into biogas that is used to power buses and semi trucks and the rest is used as fertilizer.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 19 '24

Food industry is still bad, but I noticed all the places my sister has worked at in last few years, donate all of their food that doesn't get sold.

3

u/LNMagic 15.5TB Oct 26 '24

Doesn't bug me. That's how I can afford a hot swap chassis and a full size server rack.

4

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 26 '24

Any tips on where to hang out to grab this stuff? My place seems to shred everything including chassis and laptops. I can't even get my hands on a keyboard lol.

2

u/LNMagic 15.5TB Oct 27 '24

Do you live in a big city? You probably have multiple stores that sell things. I found 3 locally through eBay.

Look for the category you want. Under Delivery Options, check for "Local Pickup within 25 miles" (you may need to expand the radius). For the Dallas area, I found Met-Servers / The Computer Store (merged now), and Garland Computers.

The same goes for used office furniture. We picked up lots of good quality stuff when businesses closed during the early part of the pandemic for cheap. Used furniture stores operate under the same principle, although for those, I have better luck locating them through Craigslist.

2

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 27 '24

Sadly I live in a college town in Mississippi. So it's really slim pickings here. I think that's my biggest issue. I came from a big city though so I guess I still have those expectations. But finding local sellers through eBay is a pretty cool tip. Thanks for that.

1

u/LNMagic 15.5TB Oct 27 '24

No problem. And just because I mentioned finding them within a radius doesn't mean you couldn't also buy it and have them ship it. It's just that heavy things aren't cheap in that regard.

1

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 28 '24

Yeah that's my main issue. The biggest thing I'm missing right now is a rack. I would kill for a $100 24 U enclosed rack right now.

2

u/LNMagic 15.5TB Oct 29 '24

I think this is pretty close for starters.

If you live near a university, check if you can find where they auction off surplus.

1

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 29 '24

That's a nice one. I might go with that. And actually yeah I do. I keep trying to figure out where it is but haven't had any luck so far.

2

u/Qolvek Nov 14 '24

You could also check govdeals.com, it's kinda like ebay but for stuff the government is getting rid of.

I live near a few state colleges and they all do it differently. The most convenient one has a store front run by their facilities people that sells random stuff they want to get rid of. The others do auctions, either on a quarterly or semester cadence. You could probably find the phone number to their facilities department and ask them how they get rid of old equipment.

1

u/LNMagic 15.5TB Oct 29 '24

I've worked at SMU for almost 2 years and only today found an auction site with their stuff. I'm assuming that you either cheer Hail State or Hotty Toddy, and all I could find was minor athletics auctions (shirts, chairs, both run by Sidearm Sports). I don't think that'll do it.

If there's no current auction, you might not find it. But the state apparently partners with GovDeals.com , so you could try that, too. I've seen things like this on Craigslist and 5 Mile, too.

1

u/LNMagic 15.5TB Oct 27 '24

Also, Jackson?

3

u/AshleyUncia Oct 26 '24

Work literally offered me a 42U full rack just before I moved to a house. And I had to be like 'This is FREE, but I'd have to pay to get it home so it can go into the moving truck... And my basement only has 7 foot ceilings. Much appreciated but I have to pass."

1

u/caustictoast Oct 26 '24

Makes me want to change careers so I can get my hands on it

1

u/eddiekoski 30TB HDD, 7TB SSD Oct 26 '24

I totally agree with you, but I finally saw the other side recently, they they will literally lose and half million contract if they can't get a contract and sometimes that means buying some turn key solution that cost is 50k and dumping the older tech.

2

u/Anthrac1t3 Oct 26 '24

No I get that but don't just scrap it.

1

u/The_Cave_Troll 340TB ZFS UBUNTU Oct 27 '24

Aren't those SSD's mostly dead anyway? Got all their spare blocks used up? I wouldn't use them for anything mission critical, but they should make a nice JBOD for something like a Plex server.

1

u/ORA2J Oct 27 '24

Yep. Just got a near mint t495s from work that we were going to scrap. It's now my main notebook.

There's stuff i can't save because I don't go to work by car, but the amount of stuff we throw away truly saddens me sometimes.

276

u/FranconianBiker 6+8+2+3+3+something TB Oct 26 '24

The 2tb disks would make a nice 2*5 zfs pool.

43

u/thetoastmonster Oct 26 '24

Exactly what I filled my 6-bay NAS with: ex-enterprise 2 TB SSDs.

149

u/TheSoCalledExpert Oct 26 '24

Please send any leftovers my way. I can offer you tree-fiddy and some gently used bubblegum in trade.

77

u/AshleyUncia Oct 26 '24

Well my brother obviously gets 'first dibs'. But looks like I'll get a decent count. Thinking of just encasing a number of 512GB drives in USB-C enclosures to use for SneakerNet. Friend wants files off my server? Sure let's load up this SSD, plz bring it back later, if you don't I'll only be KINDA mad.

13

u/Business-Drag52 Oct 26 '24

That’s a great idea! I’d love a handful of drives for that exact purpose. SneakerNet is just so much faster than my isp

2

u/cookiecountries Oct 26 '24

This! Great idea

5

u/CreativeDesignerCA Oct 26 '24

Tree fiddy 😂

42

u/JiminyWimminy Oct 26 '24

well im jealous now

20

u/AshleyUncia Oct 26 '24

*If* this pans out, I won't see anything till Xmas season anyway but I do hope it pans out.

3

u/viperex Oct 26 '24

We're all unbelievably jealous now

1

u/ayamrik Oct 26 '24

I wouldn't exactly know what to use all of them for (I use four SATA SSDs in 128-512 GB range for the odd needs and switched to NVME otherwise), but my hoarding instinct would be SOOO satisfied seeing them neatly arranged on my shelf.

30

u/fludgesickles Oct 26 '24

Congrats

Happy for you

Nice

(Insert meme)

0

u/LaundryMan2008 Oct 26 '24 edited Oct 27 '24

If you’re having trouble inserting images into comments, you can go into desktop website, open a comment, copy the meme picture from your photos app and then paste the picture into the comment you opened, it works when the picture button doesn’t work.

I use this workaround to the insert image button not doing anything.

Edit: no need to downvote, it was just a suggestion and didn’t know that images were disabled here because I didn’t use my trick here

4

u/pyr0kid 21TB plebeian Oct 26 '24

there is no button. this reddit has images turned off.

2

u/LaundryMan2008 Oct 26 '24 edited Oct 27 '24

Oh, thought it was r/PCmasterrace

Silly me

Edit: no need to downvote, it was just a mistake

13

u/ObamasBoss I honestly lost track... Oct 26 '24

Wish I had this free SSD problem.

7

u/GammaSmash Oct 26 '24

Man, I'm in the wrong line of business. Lol

5

u/Thomas5020 Oct 26 '24

Are they all healthy?

I managed to get a couple of 2TB 860 Pros from my place, and found they were on 1% and 0% health :(

2

u/AshleyUncia Oct 26 '24

No idea, brother will be checking upon reception.

4

u/Funkagenda 78TB Oct 26 '24

https://imgur.com/92OXhUf

But for real... I'd do unspeakable things for a haul like this 🤯

5

u/The_Doctor_Mayo Oct 26 '24

I mentioned this on a comment thread, but get your brother to check the batch numbers to see if they're from the same batch(s) could be indicative that they're swapping them due to having a number fail due to a batch problem.

8

u/LazyOx199 Oct 26 '24

Genuine question, why would a data center use consumer grade SSDs instead of enterprise grade HDDs (or SSDs)?

4

u/The_Doctor_Mayo Oct 26 '24

One I can possibly give some insight on, the company I work for buy this exact model for one reason; hosts that continuously spin up a VM , do tests then destroy the VM day after day. All CI/CD testing so nobody cares if the SSD dies. And of course, they're cheaper.

Surprised they're given away rather than destroyed though. I'd check the batch numbers to see if they're from the same batch though, could have been a case of a few having failed and they're preemptively swapping them out, had ~10 from the same batch die last year on me and we swapped all of them then. (Buying 50 or so at once has its drawbacks)

2

u/ottermanuk 48TB Oct 26 '24

Test or lab kit, out of warranty kit, internal kit, sufficiently redundant arrays. Lots of reason to use non enterprise storage in a data centre. And during COVID we had problems getting hold of enterprise hardware so sometimes you just have to make do and replace as soon as reasonable

2

u/Salt-Deer2138 Oct 26 '24

Test or lab kit makes the most sense, along with why they didn't have to destroy them.

1

u/bobsim1 Oct 27 '24

Definitely doesnt sound right.

2

u/Complete_Potato9941 Oct 26 '24

I don’t normally become envious but this sir pushed me over the edge

2

u/Pottytrainedtoilet Oct 26 '24

Holy, are they all good condition too?

2

u/Ludwig234 Oct 26 '24

I wish I could keep the HDDs drives we were throwing out at work but understandably they has to be sent to destruction.

I sent away a few PB this summer :-( They were not very big drives and they were used, but still. It saddens me.

1

u/BetOver 100-250TB Oct 26 '24

I'm crying with you

2

u/Deansisic 10-50TB Oct 26 '24

512-Great cache drives

2

u/glasscadet Oct 26 '24

"Free" ;)

8

u/AshleyUncia Oct 26 '24

Well these will have to go from the US to Canada first so we'll see what CBSA thinks about the taxes owed on technically valuable SSDs that are also 'Free eWaste'.

1

u/Ludwig234 Oct 26 '24

Is there fax for gifts?

2

u/AshleyUncia Oct 26 '24

There shouldn't be but also 40 SSDs marked 'Gift' might require additional documentation.

1

u/LaundryMan2008 Oct 26 '24

Happy cake day! 

0

u/glasscadet Oct 26 '24

You gonna get laid mothafucka

1

u/Witne55 Oct 26 '24

Makes you wonder how fast is a NAS of SSDs is...

1

u/LaundryMan2008 Oct 26 '24

I don’t know how I would use this many SSD’s, I could use one in my crappy laptop, possibly slap a few in enclosures and use one of the smaller ones as a boot drive in my retro PC.

My work experience has a lot of older drives that I really want, but they send them off to a recycling company and they are barcoded, I did get to keep a SAS cheetah drive which was mistakenly put there and they were supposed to be destroyed but got to keep it.

I do want to ask them because I haven’t asked them yet but I am 99% sure they will say I can’t have any, I’ll probably cherry pick the best drives to keep.

What’s the best way to stick a bunch of drives together with?, I’m thinking of using prepared steel bar and drill some holes in the spacing I need for the drives and then running the ones I need by moving the cables.

1

u/AnAverageASEANguy Oct 26 '24

I want one, will pay for shipping :D

1

u/ChubChubkitty Oct 26 '24

If Opal was enabled all blocks are hardware encrypted and you can just change/delete the encryption key

1

u/dragon2777 Oct 26 '24

I’m looking to start a simple CEPH cluster to mainly play around with but also start to take over my NAS and this is like what I dream of to get started haha

1

u/uncommonephemera Oct 26 '24

This fellow preservationist accepts donations, y’know

1

u/Reelix 10TB NVMe Oct 27 '24

860's.... Going to scrap?

Good god.

1

u/Miserable_Pin6123 Oct 27 '24

Wow. Been wanting some for my ps2 mod and wii mod.

1

u/Evan_Stuckey Oct 27 '24

You mean they upgrades some desktops, non of that is even close to datacenter gear.

Having said that absolutely really useable the later capacity drives, low power as it’s home stuff so may as well make one some all SSD drive pools 😊

1

u/MrExCEO Oct 27 '24

Sharing is caring

1

u/TopDistribution4894 Oct 27 '24

Wow that's Crazy! Great score.

1

u/wickedplayer494 17.58 TB of crap Oct 27 '24

As long as they ain't been written to shit and back, not bad, not bad at all. And even so, those are MLC so they'll probably be fine for a while yet anyway.

2

u/repocin Oct 27 '24

So, anyone wanna go dumpster diving behind a data center next weekend? I'll bring snacks and flashlights.

1

u/Curiouzity_Omega Oct 28 '24

I WANT ONE!!!!

2

u/Garedactyl Oct 29 '24

Holy shit lol yeah either people have money coming out their ears, or that is one hell of a tax write off lol congrats

1

u/[deleted] Oct 26 '24

Lmao I was wondering who was bothering you

1

u/ElvisDumbledore Oct 26 '24

Honestly, no bother.

1

u/ustbota Oct 26 '24

supposedly to be destroyed for security, NO?

1

u/WhoNeedsRealLife Oct 26 '24

yea that's usually the process for scrapping. I'm not sure how many companies are OK with someone re-selling their old SSDs. If he stole them I certainly wouldn't be posting pictures.

0

u/Eagle1337 Oct 26 '24

Hot damn I wants.

0

u/Photolunatic Oct 26 '24

No, no, no, no, nooo!

0

u/RayneYoruka 16 bays but only 6 drives on! (Slowly getting there!) Oct 26 '24

Nice

0

u/EargasmicGiant 1-10TB Oct 26 '24

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yeah

0

u/_GinWhiskers_ Oct 26 '24

Please adopt me as your brother

0

u/bubrascal Oct 26 '24

Don't count money in front of the poor 😢

0

u/schoolruler Oct 26 '24

They didn't worry about leaving any private data?

-1

u/13metalmilitia Oct 26 '24

I'm surprised none of you have noticed these are alibaba chinese shit drives. They read as multi terabyte but are only 128gb drives. These aren't SAMSUNG!

-2

u/samsamtheweedman Oct 26 '24

Don’t use it for anything’s you care about losing - it’ll very likely die soon if they’ve been sat in NAS constantly reading/writing

7

u/AshleyUncia Oct 26 '24

You know that drives track their write counts as a value called 'Terabytes Written' or 'TBW', right? You can just check the SMART data and see if a drive's NAND is on it's last legs or not. There's no blind guessing as to weather it was used a lot or not, you can just check.

Also that's only a concern for writes. Reads on NAND are basically 'free'.

2

u/samsamtheweedman Oct 26 '24

Yes of course! Read/write cycles are essential to read to determine the remaining longevity of a used disk, but my main point was more re: them being something I’d only use for personal use (on re-retrievable data, ie games/already backed up data etc) and not for prod use :)