this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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Hey all you beautiful selfhosters,

What are your suggestions for frugally obtaining HDDs in the current economic climate? Specifically the EU (Netherlands).

I'm looking at second hand drives, but even those go for โ‚ฌ100+ now, with bad sectors and all.

Can we organise a collective AI datacenter robbery and doll out some stolen drives? ๐Ÿ˜

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[โ€“] mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Honestly, Iโ€™ve been taking a chance on eBay. If the price is close to $10/TB and the drive is an enterprise drive that is listed as known to be working, with a good return policy, I take the risk. I just run tests as soon as I have it so far, all have been good (eight purchases).

[โ€“] cenzorrll@piefed.ca 3 points 5 days ago

Same. I use these drives in a mirrored setup or to hold data that's replaceable. If they make it a few months without showing errors they might get entrusted to something more important. I'll shell out for a new drive for my constantly in use drives, luckily I read the warning signs and bought a few 20tb HDDs when ram and SSDs started skyrocketing. I'm kicking myself for not grabbing a few backup m.2 nvme and 2.5" SSDs, because I'm already doing the hardrive shuffle in my mini PCs. I'm fine living life with networked rusty spinners, but I really really don't want to go back to spinny boot/high throughput drives.