HDD scarcity

[tooki]

You can buy 2.5" SAS enterprise HDDs for servers.

the problem is: where?

• Amazon? I don't trust(1)
• eBay? I don't trust(2)
• Local resellers? they no more sell HDDs, only SDD and NVME
• ...

To me, this is like asking “But where can one buy green apples? I don’t trust the corner smoke shop nor the guy selling groceries out of the back of his truck. And the local mom and pop grocer only carries red apples.” To which I’d say, “try… a supermarket?”

What I mean is: there are, with 100% certainty, proper computer component distributors in the UK. (Businesses don’t buy components from Amazon or eBay except under duress, so there have to exist proper distributors.) It should take no more than a few seconds of googling to find out who the big ones are.

[madires]

Just checked a few local distributors and online shops. SAS 2.5" and 3.5" drives are available (a bit pricey though).

[Psi]

yeah, I checked our local SAS SSD 2ndhand market as well.
It was all  / 400GB  for NZ$399 / or 1.92TB for NZ$799
Which isn't worth it when you can get a brand new 2TB Crucial or Kingston for a bit under NZ$400

[DiTBho]

You can buy 2.5" SAS enterprise HDDs for servers.

the problem is: where?

• Amazon? I don't trust(1)
• eBay? I don't trust(2)
• Local resellers? they no more sell HDDs, only SDD and NVME
• ...

To me, this is like asking “But where can one buy green apples? I don’t trust the corner smoke shop nor the guy selling groceries out of the back of his truck. And the local mom and pop grocer only carries red apples.” To which I’d say, “try… a supermarket?”

What I mean is: there are, with 100% certainty, proper computer component distributors in the UK. (Businesses don’t buy components from Amazon or eBay except under duress, so there have to exist proper distributors.) It should take no more than a few seconds of googling to find out who the big ones are.

Saint Google, yeah, to realize that, either they no longer have HDDs in stock, but only SSDs and NVMEs, or they have HDDs that sell at double/triple the price.

[DiTBho]

bought qty=4 hdd from Amazon -> tested with badblocks + SMART analysis -> returned 2 -> +2
bought qty=5 hdd from Amazon -> tested with badblocks + SMART analysis -> returned 3 -> +2
bought qty=6 hdd from Amazon -> tested with badblocks + SMART analysis -> returned 5 -> +1
-----------
six weeks spent to have five HDDs!!!

This method somehow works as I didn't cost an arm and a leg(1), but it's also somehow defective in term of effor!

I mean, yeah, Amazon allows you to "test and return", but how hard is it to put together five reliable drives for a damn RAID!
Each badblock pass takes five hours, worse still five days to have money back!

Things to do when you have a very limited budget, but no time limit 

(1) referring to the comment above, "why don't you try a supermarket", in this specific case, I would have paid exactly 4 times what I paid on Amazon, per single disc, qty=5 HDDs needed, that's why!

[madires]

Unfortunately it's a bad time to buy HDDs, SSDs, RAM or CPUs. It's not only the scarcity and high prices, but also more fraud and counterfeits. Usually I replace my home server's HDDs every 5 years (due this year). However, this time I'll run them a year or two longer until the situation is back to normal.