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this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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No shit! I was shopping NewEgg for some used drives. Found a 500 GB HDD for $36 USD which I immediately clicked on only to find this warning:
WTF. Who would buy a used HDD with up to 25 bad sectors?
@irmadlad @moonpiedumplings Enterprise drives w/ bad sectors and a 5yr warranty? Me (raises hand)!
With snapraid and backups and the warranty, I'm perfectly happy to use enterprise drives _where the drive errors aren't increasing_. Worst case, I lose some of those linux distributions and have to re-download them. I wouldn't use one without a warranty though (and I certainly wouldn't waste my time on a 500gb drive, the last hdd I bought w/ sector errors was 14TB for $140).
Link me up, Scotty
Really. I would have never guessed. I mean, I've always viewed bad sectors as a sign of a failing drive. Just a really bad day in the future, marked as an appointment.
What kind of millage on the average do you get out of something like that?
When people say that linux adds a second life to bad hardware, they don't just mean making 8 gb of ram usable again. They also mean stuff like this, using dying hardware to it's last breath.
Related: https://lorenz.brun.one/dealing-with-bad-ram-on-linux/
You can mark the failing parts of ram as explicitly bad so Linux avoids them, just like with hard drives. Another way to get more lifespan out of this hardware.
I love this. I am being schooled. I honestly have never heard of what you speak of. But by golly I'm going to spool up on the topic.
@irmadlad I can't tell you averages (I'm not running massive storage servers with hundreds of drives here), but I ordered this particular one in Oct 2025. It's still going strong. There's another one that I bought back in 2019 or 2020 that I used for a few years before replacing it due to needing more space. Meanwhile, I've used plenty of consumer drives over the years that were a lot less reliable, so I have different rules for consumer drives (toss 'em at the first error) vs enterprise drives.
@irmadlad Also, I would think that companies offering long warranties on refurbished drives are playing the odds in a way that makes them money. It probably wouldn't be profitable if they sold drives w/ bad/reallocated sectors and the majority of them died within the warranty period.
My assumption is that all drives will die (or suffer corruption) at the worst possible time, so do proper backup/scrubbing. Then look for deals where I can.
Dude. It's like you opened a window and pulled the blinds back. I honestly had never heard of doing that. I'm going to have to spool up on this topic. Any good reading I can do?
i have no idea.
i personally bin (recycle bin, that is) any drive (ssd or hdd) that has any abnormality in its internal diagnostics data, or won't pass short and long diagnostics tests even if their stats are clean.
I've heard this dude named @Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it he uses them. I've never heard of that. TIL