I’m not storing anything important, so I can do used/refurbished drives and deal with a failed drive, but I’d rather not get scammed. I don’t care about brand, I can deal with SAS or SATA. I’m hoping for drives that are 6TB and up to go in a cheap mini-NAS I threw together.
It seems like most stories from lurking on this sub are to stay away from the deals on ebay. Unfortunately that seems to be the only place where you can get a decent drive for ~$50-60 per, because the reputable places only deal with bigger 12-20 TB refurb drives for >$100 each. I’m not spending $1000 to store my cartoons, I’m also unwilling to delete anything I downloaded with my overpriced internet.
Is this a pipe dream and I should just increase my budget? Is it worthwhile to wait and hunt and hope the market becomes more favorable to my dilemma?
These 2 statements don’t really go together. Either the stuff you have is worth keeping, or it’s not. If you’re unwilling to delete, and unwilling to re-download, then why would you risk losing it to a bad drive that you got for cheap?
Re-downloading would also hurt my wallet. I want to keep what I have and have the ability to download more, but not for more than $300 or $400. Is that possible in your opinion? I know I’ll never get a new drive that has any sort of density I’m looking for at that price. So I’m willing to use refurb drives and deal with the possibility of failure as long as those risks are within reason. I guess that means a place with some kind of buyer protection or return policy that’s better than begging and pleading with ebay as the arbiter.