3 ms·

It's also very illuminating to check SMART stats on "new" drives that show hundreds of on/off cycles or other evidence that the drives are not, in fact, new. P

by rsync 7y ago

It's also very illuminating to check SMART stats on "new" drives that show hundreds of on/off cycles or other evidence that the drives are not, in fact, new. Pro tip: Many, many drives sold on Amazon by large, "reputable" suppliers are not new in the way you think they are - they are "new pulls" from systems integrators that received them as part of the complete PC and then pulled them, en masse, to sell in bulk. Those "new pulls" may have hundreds and hundreds of hours on them ... We (rsync.net) have started trending towards B&H Photo for larger batches of drives ... they pack them cluefully and there is no "new pull" monkey-business ... unfortunately they don't always have the quantity on-hand that we require, but that's not a knock against them ...

oh_sigh 7y ago
Why not just buy direct from the manufacturer?
- Spooky23 7y ago
  You need really high quantities. At moderate quantities, Intel and SSD makers do backend deals to get rebate credits to a PC OEM. When I bought lots of computers, we would usually get -1-3% margins.
tomc1985 7y ago
Wow, so I guess people are buying new PCs and essentially scrapping them for parts? That's....... actually kind of funny
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Probably not new PCs. But I know a lot of Enterprise-tier clients that do a 3-5 year refresh of hardware. And no shortage of business that fail or need to offload new-ish hardware. Rip out the HDDs, RAM DIMMs, etc. and resell as "new" for extra $$$.
- hakfoo 7y ago
  When I bought my present laptop, it was about $200 cheaper to order the min-spec (4G RAM/500G hard disc) and add aftermarket RAM and SSD upgrades than to buy it the way I wanted from the maker. I could imagine a firm that ordered 1000 units and did (or contracted out for) the same upgrades, now has 1000 unneeded 500-gig hard drives they can unload cheap.
toast0 7y ago
> they pack them cluefully Yeah, that's why amazon is a hard no for hard drive buys for me. I don't mind when a lot of things are bouncing around in an oversized shipping box with insufficient padding, or in a box with cat litter, but a hard drive should be shipped responsibly, and I can't reasonably expect that from amazon.

by rsync 7y ago

oh_sigh 7y ago

Why not just buy direct from the manufacturer?

Spooky23 7y ago
You need really high quantities. At moderate quantities, Intel and SSD makers do backend deals to get rebate credits to a PC OEM. When I bought lots of computers, we would usually get -1-3% margins.

tomc1985 7y ago

Wow, so I guess people are buying new PCs and essentially scrapping them for parts? That's....... actually kind of funny

blaser-waffle 7y ago
Probably not new PCs. But I know a lot of Enterprise-tier clients that do a 3-5 year refresh of hardware. And no shortage of business that fail or need to offload new-ish hardware. Rip out the HDDs, RAM DIMMs, etc. and resell as "new" for extra $$$.
hakfoo 7y ago
When I bought my present laptop, it was about $200 cheaper to order the min-spec (4G RAM/500G hard disc) and add aftermarket RAM and SSD upgrades than to buy it the way I wanted from the maker. I could imagine a firm that ordered 1000 units and did (or contracted out for) the same upgrades, now has 1000 unneeded 500-gig hard drives they can unload cheap.

toast0 7y ago

> they pack them cluefully Yeah, that's why amazon is a hard no for hard drive buys for me. I don't mind when a lot of things are bouncing around in an oversized shipping box with insufficient padding, or in a box with cat litter, but a hard drive should be shipped responsibly, and I can't reasonably expect that from amazon.