Should 2nd hand hardrives not be sold?

[arthurleung]

I had sold 3 of my harddrives to my friends 4 months ago. They phoned me recently. Last week one of the 160G I sold to them went dead. This week another one of the 120G went dead, and seems the THIRD one I sold to them having trouble reading data.

Those harddrives were running 7x24 for around 6 months at 25'C, 5.00V at 5V rail, 11.97V at 12V rail with very light load (just storing data). SMART reporting 100% health when they left. No bad sector at all, reallocated sectors are full. I cleaned them, reformatted them before sending out. The Maxtor warranty ended (crap 1 yr)

Should I be held responsible for those failures? Should I be giving them full refund? I offered them 10 quids per failed harddrive as compensation, is that enough? I'm really thinking of not selling any of my harddrives. They seems to be being cursed Does harddrives not like "changing environment"?

Freezer trick doesn't work, motor won't spin up. I'm unsure if its the motor which is dead or the control circuits. There does not seem to be burnt mark on the PCB. Could anyone recommend my friends some cheap (but reliable) data recovery company?

Or at least some other tricks that may make the harddrive run?

I afforded my own RAID1/5 but unfortunately not everyone bother to deal with RAID (Everyone only think of RAID0, or no RAID at all).

[oralpain]

No such thing as cheap data recovery for dead drives.

Drives don't like heat and drives don'tlike crap power. A drive may run 10 years with no problems if its kept cool, and then die in a week if its too hot.

As to wether your compensation was enough, that's an opinion and would depend on what you told them about the drives when you sold them.

[Nox]

I don't like selling stuff to friends, I sold a system that never crashed, 100% flawless for 18months+ sold it to a friend, he says it started crashing, another mate buggered it up with a winxp cd which didn't help in an attempt to fix it by reinstalling :/ This system runs in a non-ventilated cupboard, with a PSU and case combo that cost £25. I'm not suprised it crashes occasionally!! What do you do?

Nox

[arthurleung]

I don't like selling stuff to friends, I sold a system that never crashed, 100% flawless for 18months+ sold it to a friend, he says it started crashing, another mate buggered it up with a winxp cd which didn't help in an attempt to fix it by reinstalling :/ This system runs in a non-ventilated cupboard, with a PSU and case combo that cost £25. I'm not suprised it crashes occasionally!! What do you do?

Nox

I tried to be kind to them so I didn't ask them whether they treat it badly. I know I tried those drives well. I did tell them if those drives does not work there are not warranty on them. I only guaranteen non-DOA.

I didn't mean "cheap" but I mean "reasonably priced" dara recovery service

[Moby-Dick]

still doesnt exisit.

I'd say all kit is sold as seen unless it really is DOA.

Hard drives do fail , its a fact of life

[Swafe]

HDDs fail, like everything else

I'd still happily buy a second hand hard drive tho

[Kumagoro]

4 months is a long time, if it had failed on less than a month i might feel guilty.

[satan]

4 months is a long time, if it had failed on less than a month i might feel guilty.

4 months and they fail? That's not right. I have hard drives over 10 years old still running.

[Kumagoro]

not when its second hand and in perfect working order when you sold it. In 4 months
its not going to be down to something you did.

[DJWillis]

After 4 months I would say it's hardly your fault. They could have been run with a crappy PSU and an air tight box 24/7 for all that time . I think an offer of £10 back is well outside of what should be expected but then I think all my friends would realise that.

Surely some of the drives still have a manufactures warrantee left? I assume most big ones (160+) are 2 years+, well all the drives I buy are.

If they did not back up there data then it is largely there own lookout regards loosing data. I have worked for a professional data recovery company in the past and it's not a cheap process to do (and very time consuming). There is no such thing as a reasonable data recovery agency as you would only ever do it to recover really vital data.

There are several homebrew approaches to data recovery (I often do this to recover non vital data for friends etc.) but you wont have a working or RMA suitable drive at the end of it .

[petrefax]

I don't like selling stuff to friends,
Nox

s'true enough - not only are you on call 24/7 for free, for random questions...or repairs when they mess the software up but if anything fails its down to you, again wth the expectation that its free

i sold my no.2 PC to a workmate just after xmas & he got a hand built, decent spec, well tested & tweaked machine for a very good price

since then he's dropped it off his desk (he's not actually told me this but he told someone else who told me) and its been wedged into one of those cheap computer desks, with the special slot for a PC which has no airflow whatsoever & the desk is right next to a radiator

unsurprisingly its started getting the occasional random freeze & i've not heard the end of it. i ran this machine 24/7 for months on end without a hitch....but then i always ensure my machines get decent airflow, i keep them away from things like radiators, and i don't tend to drop them very often!

i've suggested moving it somewhere thats a bit more suitable for a computer, but that would apparently ruin the feng shui of his flat or somesuch, so i've added another 80mm fan at the front to try keeping the hard drive cool,

now his missus is complaining its "a bit loud"

what can you do???

stern note to self - only sell computer relate stuff to other techie mates

[oralpain]

I don't like selling stuff to friends, I sold a system that never crashed, 100% flawless for 18months+ sold it to a friend, he says it started crashing, another mate buggered it up with a winxp cd which didn't help in an attempt to fix it by reinstalling :/ This system runs in a non-ventilated cupboard, with a PSU and case combo that cost £25. I'm not suprised it crashes occasionally!! What do you do?

Nox

I sell stuff to friends and aquaintences all the time, they know that if something goes wrong, I will asess the situation and determine if it is my fault or not. If it's not my fault, they won't be getting squat from me, they know this, I have made it clear.

You also have to inform people what the computer will or will not tolerate if you sell it to some one. People are stupid, probably even your friends. Explicitly tell them not to restric air-flow, let pets eat it, pour coffee one it, and all those other things that should be common sense.

[iranu]

Sell to clued up friends. People who know the score. As soon as you sell to muppets they expect 24/7 support, compensation, etc. If I buy from a mate then I expect that mate to be clean with me and they are, as you would expect, but if something dies 5 months after I bought it, I may ask him/her about original warranty etc but the onus was on me in buying it knowing the score. I know about percentages in manufacturing and the odd gremlin - those that don't can be educated. They can also be taught to back up data properly. It's unfortunate but it does happen. If I were ever to find a friend offering me dodgy kit then I'd well..... but it won't happen.

[Firelord]

4mths down the line and they die is not your fault! As other people have said you don't know what they have done!

If its outta warranty then they shouldn't expect anything and deal with it.

[Mike Fishcake]

I usually don't like selling stuff to friends. I'll quiet happily tell them to buy components themselves and I'll fit it for them though.

As far as PC builds go though, I usually advise them to go to a big manufacturer like Dell or HP rather than build something myself, because even though I always build using trusted components, when they do something stupid like downloading adware-riddled programs, they always come back to me, whereas I can tell them to ring tech support if they've bought a brand name box :-)

[Millennium]

do look into the warranty; many HDs have 3 years now so you should be fine. No reciept required, just get the serial, enter into webby, run their diags, tell em the code (if poss), and send it to em. New replacement is even a newer model sometimes! I've done this a few times with maxtor and WD (we were using them on a test bench...) and there were no problems at all......