I am currently expanding my Homelab setup, and want to buy a 10TB drive, for media storage. It’s a Seagate Ironwolf disk, so perfect for the job. But, it’s second hand. It was originally bought in 2019, but stopped being used after 2022. Only used for static storage, it’s been booted less than 50 times. I can get it for 1/3 of the original price.
What do you think? Are there any rules about buying used storage I should know about before buying it?
Firstly, I’d check if there are any firmware updates for the drive and install them. Then I’d run a full disk scan/diagnostics using the manufacturer’s diag tools - eg Samsung has their HUTIL software, Seagate has Seatools etc. The scan should also pick up any bad sectors or other issues with the drive. Finally, I’d do a full wipe - either a DBAN single pass, or if I’m within Linux then I’d just write zeros using
dd. Wiping the entire disk isn’t really necessary, but I just feel like it gives me that “new drive” feeling - otherwise you’d be stepping over someone else’s 1s and 0s, and that just feels gross.