Need to store a lot of non-critical data? Live in the US? Want to maximise value over speed? Have we got the storage device for you: a refurbished 12TB Seagate enterprise HDD. These drives typically go for around $130 new, but you can pick them up for just $82 in “refurbished – excellent” condition on Ebay US. Their specialist HDD seller promises fully tested drives with zero bad sectors and a three-year warranty, which sounds great at $6.83 per TB!
For media archives or game file backups, I’d say this is an incredible value – just don’t use it for your only backup for priceless family photos, even if these drives are rated for some impressive durability with a (extremely conservative) 1 in 1015 error rate.
According to redditor /u/dstanton, that means that if you ran five of these drives for five years, you’d expect only one sector failure on one drive on average – and an error that’s easily corrected if you ran multiple drives in a RAID array with redundancy.
So, if you need cheap storage for stuff that you could redownload if you really had to, this is an awesome choice for our American readers!