Buy used and tested hard disks

High Reliability – Even with Refurbished Hard Drives

Before our hard drives make their way into our warehouse and ultimately into your server room, they undergo a thorough inspection. This refurbishment process includes, among other things, the evaluation of S.M.A.R.T. values. These provide information about key parameters such as power-on hours and start cycles, as well as read/write errors, spin-up time, and uncorrectable sectors. Only if all these values indicate that the hard drives will continue to operate reliably for years to come, and after passing a final benchmark test, will they be stocked in our inventory. Sustainability, great prices, and extremely long service life can indeed go hand in hand.

What Sets Enterprise Hard Drives Apart for Servers and Storage?

The requirements for desktop and server hard drives only partially overlap. Of course, every customer wants as much capacity as possible for their money. However, if you require reliability and high performance, you should consider using enterprise hard drives for several reasons.
Enterprise drives have a significantly higher Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), which is the estimated time before a problem or failure occurs. In terms of speed, especially mechanical HDDs differ – with up to 15,000 RPM, they rotate much faster than standard desktop drives. Using the SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) interface offers additional benefits such as higher data throughput, the use of longer cables, and the theoretical operation of up to 128 HDDs on a single SAS cable. Incidentally, the protocol stack is fully backward-compatible with SATA drives. The dual-porting feature allows a SAS drive to connect to two separate host adapters, enabling use in redundant architectures.
Features such as Error Recovery Control and related intelligent technologies (like TLER, ERC, or CCTL) are not found in regular hard drives and ensure that the system does not prematurely or unnecessarily mark drives as defective or unusable.
Similar expectations apply to server-grade SSDs. Here too, longevity, stability, and thus data integrity are top priorities. These benefits are often achieved through the use of better controllers and higher-quality memory cells, resulting in higher Total Bytes Written (TBW) values. TBW indicates the theoretically expected lifespan of an SSD.
So, if you want business-critical or sensitive data to be accessible reliably and with high performance, we recommend investing in original manufacturer drives. Even refurbished drives can be operated worry-free in 24/7 high-load environments – and you save money in the process. Additional precautions like data backups on external HDD/SSD-based storage systems or LTO drives are also recommended and can be implemented using products from our portfolio – just ask us.

We’ll Help You Choose

As a user of professional IT systems, you have a legitimate interest in ensuring that the hard drives used are fully compatible with your servers and storage systems.
Some manufacturers modify the firmware of hard drives to ensure full compatibility with their servers and RAID controllers. Compatibility must be checked especially thoroughly for network solutions and the associated storage systems, as these are particularly firmware-sensitive.
Additionally, there is a wide range of hard drive trays that differ not only by standard sizes (2.5" and 3.5") but also by model and generation. For example, the tray of an HP DL380 Gen8 cannot be used with Gen9 models. The same applies to other manufacturers such as Lenovo, Dell, or Fujitsu. Moreover, price, size, and performance must be in proper balance. Different scenarios, use cases, and budgets place different demands on the storage medium selection.
Read or write intensive, endurance or mixed use, RAID 1+0 or RAID 5? We are familiar with the full range of original manufacturer products and the potential use of third-party hard drives when paired with the right hot-plug tray, and we’ll help you find the perfect hard drive at a competitive price.