Cheapest source of "(Windows) PC Boot Drives"?

[VirtualLarry]

Been looking lately, found some 160GB 7200RPM "New" (picture shows sealed drives with WD label, "Recertified") on ebay. Got ten of them for $120, so $12 shipped each.

Might have paid too much for those.

Used to buy SSDs, 120GB mostly, when I could get them for $30-35. Also dabbled in buying some Chinese SSDs, 60GB size in MLC. Performance was partially lacking in those, but they were still better than a HDD.

Wondering if anyone else has a call for small-ish "boot drives" (OS drives) for builds that they make.

I give away some of my builds, so price is important. Sometimes, price is more important than performance, although I do love me some SSDs for all of my personal rigs and for-pay builds.

Edit: Specifically, I'm looking for desktop HDDs 160GB or larger, for $25 or less, and SSDs 60GB for $30 or less, or 120GB for $40 or less. Also, much prefer "new" or at the very least "mfg refurb" (for HDD). "Seller tested" or "seller refurb" is fine for SSDs, as long as they have more than 50-60% health left.

Saw some 80GB Intel Series 320 SATAII 2.5" SSDs for under $30 ea., that was kind of a deal.

 

[cbn]

Maybe look for low capacity 3.5" hard drives with a recent manufacture date? (The type of hard drive that gets swapped out for a SSD either immediately or relatively soon after purchase.)

Example: A while back I bought two 2016 manufacture Western Digital 500GB (short stroke from 1TB platter) 3.5" 7200rpm hard drives in used condition for $22 shipped each. (16 power on hours for both drives..... I was pleasantly surprised they were essentially new pulls)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Or they were re-labeled, with their SMART data reset... it's so hard to tell what drives are actually NEW these days.

Supposedly, you can use Smartctl on Linux, to dump the full "smart logs", and you can look at the POH "milestones" on each of the log entries, if there are any.

Those ten WD "Green AV-GP" drives that were shipped horribly, all packed inside a cardboard box like books, with a tiny scrap of bubble-wrap as filler, rather than bubble-wrap each drive, that I bought like 6 months ago or so, were a complete mish-mash of different firmware versions. The labels all looked effectively the same, with different serials, but I can't help but wonder if they were re-labeled.

CDI reported some as 5900 RPM, and some as 7200 RPM (!). But SMART POH were zero on all of them.

So, either WD themselves took the "floor scrapings" HDDs from leftover productions, and stuck a "Green AV-GP" label on them, or someone did.

Edit: Anyways, the listing for the ten 160GB HDDs, shows a WD "Recertified" white label, which reminded me of that other Newegg deal, with the mfg recert drives, forget what size, had that white label and had zero POH, and I guessed it was NOS.


https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/refurb-nos-wd-blue-160gb-sata2-3-5-hdd-14-99-fs-newegg.2443327/

 

[cbn]

They were actually sold as used drives. The seller didn't claim low hours or "New".

I purchased them solely on the 2016 manufacture date expecting drives with 8000 hours or less.

 

[sdifox]

At this point of the game just buy used small ssds

 

[VirtualLarry]

At this point of the game just buy used small ssds

Are HDDs that obsolete at this point?

(I used a PC with a primary OS 1TB HDD the other day. It wasn't horrible, browsing or launching apps, but bootup took some time, and especially, upgrading from an older build of Win10, to CU, took quite a while. CPU was a 3.4Ghz SNB i3, so it wasn't exactly "slow".)

 

[sdifox]

Are HDDs that obsolete at this point?

for slow computers, ssd is a great equalizer. And most people are retiring their small ssds now, so it is the right choice.


I mean this is brand new...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/60GB-Kingst...c74ec8a5e119305e9a6a62&pid=100506&rk=1&rkt=1&

 

[VirtualLarry]

for slow computers, ssd is a great equalizer. And most people are retiring their small ssds now, so it is the right choice.


I mean this is brand new...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/60GB-Kingst...c74ec8a5e119305e9a6a62&pid=100506&rk=1&rkt=1&

Sigh. Over $40, for a (name-brand, who knows if they are fakes) 60GB SSD, and shipped from China?

I used to get 120GB SSDs from Newegg's ebay store, for under $35, regularly.

 

[sdifox]

Sigh. Over $40, for a (name-brand, who knows if they are fakes) 60GB SSD, and shipped from China?

I used to get 120GB SSDs from Newegg's ebay store, for under $35, regularly.

Just an example, I am sure you can find better deals than that.

 

[UsandThem]

Boom.

128GB for $36 after coupon code.

https://slickdeals.net/f/10399400-256gb-adata-ultimate-su800-2-5-3d-nand-ssd-70ac-128gb-36ac

I just set alerts at that site for "ssd".

 

[VirtualLarry]

UGH! Why, do I always seem to have this problem, buying HDDs off of ebay???

I ordered ten 160GB HDDs, "new", from "ntnm" in New Mexico. Supposedly a "Top Rated" seller, according to ebay.

Well, they jammed all ten HDDs, into a priority mail med. flat-rate box, NO PADDING WHATSOEVER. From freaking NM, to MA.

UNACCEPTABLE.

At $120 for ten drives, surely, they could have affording a decent OEM case box. Newegg did it for me with free shipping, for a qty as small as five drives.

Edit: The first drive I've tested out of this batch, appears to be alright. Initial CDI showed zero POH, HDTune surface scan went OK, NTFS Full Format went OK, now doing the final HDTune surface scan.

So, maybe these drives survived OK? I think that they're rampload. And I think that they went via air transport most of the way, so they had a fairly easy ride. At least, they don't seem like they banged the heck out of each other. But possibly, that's because of the way that they were packed. (I took pics.)

Edit: Ok, so the top two "flat" drives, seemed to survive, but the drive that was lengthwise, sideways, down the side of the box, didn't make it.

What a PITA. Like 1.5-2hrs to test each one.

Edit: Tested the two drives that were shipped sideways, against the two stacks of drives laid flat upon each other. The one on the longer side of the box seems to have somehow survived. The one on the short side of the box, not so lucky.

Maybe that's why these were 20% off - 20% failure rate / DOA rate.

 

[sdifox]

UGH! Why, do I always seem to have this problem, buying HDDs off of ebay???

I ordered ten 160GB HDDs, "new", from "ntnm" in New Mexico. Supposedly a "Top Rated" seller, according to ebay.

Well, they jammed all ten HDDs, into a priority mail med. flat-rate box, NO PADDING WHATSOEVER. From freaking NM, to MA.

UNACCEPTABLE.

At $120 for ten drives, surely, they could have affording a decent OEM case box. Newegg did it for me with free shipping, for a qty as small as five drives.

another reason I don't buy hdd off ebay.

 

[VirtualLarry]

another reason I don't buy hdd off ebay.

I will say that the HDDs I ordered from "dbskyusa88" arrived WELL packed, no issues with them. They appear to predominantly deal in HDDs, so I guess they know how to pack them. Unsure if "ntnm" knows what they're doing.

Edit: Very few HDD items in "ntnm"'s ebay store. So perhaps, they DONT know what they're doing. It got here quickly, though I would have preferred it taking an addition 5-8 days, if they were shipped ground, in an OEM HDD case (with padded slots for each HDD).

Edit: I recieved back a couple of messages from the ebay seller "ntnm", he said he was out of town and someone else packed up the drives, and he assured me that if I want more drives in the future, that they will be packaged much better. I'm going to take him at his word. He seemed to be fine with offering me a refund for the DOA drives.

Edit: 2017-07-29: I received a refund via Paypal for the defective drives. I'm happy now.

 

[cbn]

Edit: Specifically, I'm looking for desktop HDDs 160GB or larger, for $25 or less, and SSDs 60GB for $30 or less, or 120GB for $40 or less. Also, much prefer "new" or at the very least "mfg refurb" (for HDD). "Seller tested" or "seller refurb" is fine for SSDs, as long as they have more than 50-60% health left.

ShopSWS on ebay has manufacturer recertfied WD500AZLX for $24.99 free shipping.

(These are the same make and model drives I bought (mentioned in earlier in this thread). 3.5", 32MB cache, 7200 rpm and 500GB short stroked from 1TB platter)

 

[cbn]

A benchmark of the WD5000AZLX:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://enagem.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/wd5000azlx/index.html&edit-text=&act=url

As I mentioned earlier in the thread I own this drive, but I haven't used one singly yet (mine are in RAID-0). However, I figure the performance shouldn't be too different than what you mentioned experiencing in post #6.

P.S. These drives (or the newer 64MB cache WD500AZRZ should be around for quite a while). If I were you I would get the WD500AZRZ if you can. (EDIT: WD500AZRZ is only 5400 rpm)