Clean pull hard drives

ScoTTyBEEE · 9 Jan 2016 at 14:31

I've found a competitor selling clean pull hard drives with this description.

Note: This drive is a clean pull with 12 month warranty, the drive has been taken out of a pre-built computer and professionally erased and error checked.

Does this imply it hasn't been used at all? Has anyone ever purchased a drive with this description?

nutcase · 9 Jan 2016 at 19:17

It will probably have a few hours on it for testing and the wiping they say they have done etc. but essentially unused, yes.

I often buy RAM like this, I've not bought HDDs though.

Disco_P · 9 Jan 2016 at 21:12

Or it could have come out of a system that had been using it as an OS drive for many years.

nutcase · 10 Jan 2016 at 07:25

If the power on time didn't reflect what was sold you'd send it straight back.

K.C. Leblanc · 10 Jan 2016 at 12:48

I've just found the supplier, since they're selling 250gb & 160gb drives on this basis I would expect they're 2nd hand.

ScoTTyBEEE · 10 Jan 2016 at 14:31

K.C. Leblanc said:
I've just found the supplier, since they're selling 250gb & 160gb drives on this basis I would expect they're 2nd hand.

Good thinking, thanks. Not worth the risk with maybes, even if I can send it back it's not worth the bother.

Justintime · 12 Jan 2016 at 15:36

You'd be surprised in this day and age how many pcs can still be had with 160 and 250gb drives, new with 2015 etc manufacturer dates (the drives). Mostly in education though. Even got a few 160gb ide laptop drives off one supplier with 0 hours on them last month, though their build dates were 2006.

Dave2150 · 14 Jan 2016 at 06:54

Justintime said:
You'd be surprised in this day and age how many pcs can still be had with 160 and 250gb drives, new with 2015 etc manufacturer dates (the drives). Mostly in education though. Even got a few 160gb ide laptop drives off one supplier with 0 hours on them last month, though their build dates were 2006.

10 year old drives, brand new or not, dodgy.

Out of curiosity, what's the use of 160GB drives today?

Justintime · 14 Jan 2016 at 09:56

Sitting new drives won't be as dodgy as one thats been on everyday for the last 10 years, actually not dodgy at all as all the drives pass hdsentinel read/write tests that last a few hours with no reallocations or anomalies and the ones i've gotten in the past 2 years haven't had any issues. The electronics will mostly be fine for decades and the motors/bearings etc.. once kept in a proper environment should be in better shape than one thats had years of spinning and thermal stresses.

We have about 80 laptops given to teachers around 07 that somehow came with Core 2 cpus but an ide interface and our business manager won't buy a new lot until they're all dead and won't get ide ssd replacements so we always keep spare disks for them, kind of an upgrade as they came with 60gb Hitachis. As for new pcs coming with small disks, in schools usually all profiles are roaming and data is stored on a file server so no need for big disks as even the software packages are not that immense.

Confused Stu · 14 Jan 2016 at 12:18

Dave2150 said:
Out of curiosity, what's the use of 160GB drives today?

That's largely my view, but people still surprise me. Currently looking at a colleague's PC that's playing up. It's a 2007 Packard Bell with a dual core Pentium and 2GB DDR2 (shudder). Was really surprised to see it had a 1TB drive in it but she said she paid a lot extra for that at the time as the kids store all their schoolwork on the computer. 8+ years down the line with 4 users on the PC, and the total used storage on the drive is about 40GB, including Windows! For someone like that, 160GB would still be many, many years away from filling up.

By contrast, I've got individual game installs that take up more space than her entire family's PC use after 8 years!

bru · 14 Jan 2016 at 13:15

When you can get a 1TB drive from here for £35, these 160Gb drives had best be really cheap to be worthwhile.

Edit: Nearly £15 for 160Gb lol definitely not worth it.