Reply 20 of 22, by TheMobRules
the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-28, 17:37:There are certainly around 10 drives in the machines sitting next to me all in functional states that old here. More are in storage. Reliability is just gonna be hard to know from any manufacturer at this point. This is why I suggested it's best to keep any potential cost down to a minimum and just try. I think pretty much all of these I got for free over many years. Actually I got a box with some that old in the last year, also for free. Some still worked, and some didn't. But ones that do work, they really do keep ticking along, I even have some in long time active duty.
That's pretty much what I do. Most of my drives I got for free from discarded machines, and pretty much all that were working when I first got them are still chugging along nicely (some of them in regular use, the others I check periodically). And I don't have to worry if it dies as it just gets replaced by a similar one.
Buying used drives online for more than a few bucks is a great risk, IMHO not worth it at all, not only you don't know the previous history of the drive and how much abuse it went through during its life, it'll also be thrown around and kicked like a football by the shipping company (not even considering poor packaging). So it's no surprise that many people experience failures under those conditions.