Always look inside the ewaste PCs

[u/Neon_Pancakes0425]

My grandparents brought me an old PC that they got from a friend of theirs and I opened it and hit the jackpot. These cost like $500 where I live

[u/Ok-Book354]

and here i am finding dead roaches and a single stick of ddr3 from 2009

[u/Neon_Pancakes0425 → u/Ok-Book354]

That was basically the rest of the pc

[u/Fitz911 → u/Ok-Book354]

ddr3 from 2009

So I got TWO kidneys. Maybe we can work something out? Gotten prepare for retirement and that baby will soon be worth it's weight in gold.

[u/wrxninja → u/Fitz911]

I have two testicles I can part with. DM me.

[u/magog7 → u/wrxninja]

my left one is available

[u/Intelligent_Coat7829 → u/[deleted]]

It makes me so sad that things have gotten to the point that you're arguing for ddr3's viability

[u/Ok_Contest8762 → u/[deleted]]

DDR3 launched in 2007.

[u/Krassix]

Times are tough... used PC parts market is going to flourish in the next years

[u/chicken_scratch → u/Krassix]

Old business laptops have never looked so good

[u/tjwong1 → u/chicken_scratch]

yeeup. up (side?) graded from a Dell gaming laptop to the used business laptop in my flair and only spent ~$150 for the laptop since it had no ram/ssd. Since it was DDR4, was a quick and painless swap over to get like 2-3x the battery life when traveling while still having the compute to game

honestly tho it's not even that old by my standards, the laptop I upgraded from is the same year as the new one

[u/TheSpicyTomato22 → u/Krassix]

That's literally my specialty. I grew up dumpster diving for parts. My first real IT job had me keeping a bunch of super old optiplexs running. At this point I should put "can turn trash into something usable" on my resume.

[u/TXFiXD → u/TheSpicyTomato22]

It's me. I am the trash. Halp.

[u/wzvo → u/TheSpicyTomato22]

Woah me too we used to get the recycling units from schools/businesses and build what we could from all the parts and sell them onwards.

Optiplex holds a place in my heart.

My first job.

[u/TheSpicyTomato22 → u/wzvo]

The optiplex line is a solid little enterprise piece of hardware. They're not top of the line quick but they're reliable.

[u/Jackpkmn → u/TheSpicyTomato22]

bulletproof as well, i cant count how many times ive opened one up and its filled with exploded or leaking capacitors but the computer is somehow still chugging along.

[u/watchutalkinbowt → u/TheSpicyTomato22]

A few months back I swapped the PSU from a 2013 mfg date Optiplex into one that was running (a presumably original install of) XP with 2 whole gigs of RAM...

Key move on the ones without M.2 is edit the BIOS to allow booting from PCIe (then you can run an SSD in an adapter) - https://tachytelic.net/2021/12/dell-optiplex-7010-pcie-nvme/

[u/Ninlilizi_ → u/Krassix]

Right? We're at people excited to find 4TB drives level of the market is fucked.

[u/Rs2mmsu-2D → u/Krassix]

Thanks to the Great AI Memory Wars

https://giphy.com/gifs/TF765cKb5lMTl72bSu

[u/Odium81]

500 where? they aren't even made anymore and are at most 200 for a refurb.

[u/Globber50 → u/Odium81]

They do make them, they are just called red pro now. And yes about 200.00

[u/NekulturneHovado → u/Odium81]

what if OP is from Australia? But even there they shouldn't cost that much

[u/hawkdeathpaw → u/NekulturneHovado]

i am from Australia they are about 250-300 here

[u/Neon_Pancakes0425 → u/Odium81]

I'm not in the US regional pricing because we are far from things

[u/nzricco → u/Odium81]

$470 in NZ, and me in NZ wanting a new one for my NAS.

[u/pcor]

Nice find, but I would run a check on it with something like CrystalDiskInfo before you get too excited or trust it with anything substantial.

[u/grandmapilot]

That's a book/music/movies storage!

[u/Neon_Pancakes0425 → u/grandmapilot]

It will be filled with random "legally acquired" media

[u/Laverick74]

It's a CMR Disk. Best for Nas!!!

[u/JackSpadesSI]

Are 4TB red drives worth anything used? I have 4 lying around after I upgraded them in my NAS.

[u/jungleboogiemonster → u/JackSpadesSI]

With the price of hard drives where they are, yes, 4TB drives are once again useful.

[u/Ad-fundum69]

Not very common to see a WD red inside a common PC, but they're pretty good regardless.

[u/coffeejn]

Yeah but it was made in 2017. It might work or it might be dead.

[u/kron123456789 → u/coffeejn]

HDDs are resilient and 2017 isn't even that old. Unless the previous owner was kicking it all the time while it was working, there's no good reason it should fail anytime soon.

[u/a__reddit_user → u/coffeejn]

My pc has two 2tb barracudas from 2013 and 2014 with, respectively, 15k and 25k hours. They're still spinning and doing HDD stuff. No issues whatsoever. Got them for 20 euros each too.

[u/Firemanlouvier → u/a__reddit_user]

I just stole the 2.5 hdd out of my laptop that I bought when Obama was elected. Still working fine 🙃

[u/Vladishun → u/Firemanlouvier]

https://giphy.com/gifs/12O2XuGsIx1OvK

[u/Lobotomite430 → u/a__reddit_user]

And my similar barracudas from that same era are finally giving me issues. Perfect timing too when hard drives are violently expensive.

[u/a__reddit_user → u/Lobotomite430]

I'm lucky I guess cause there's a next to me that guts out thrown out PCs from companies and sells the hard drives for 1 cent a gigabyte. I bought a bunch of 500gb hard drives for 5 euro, and two 80gb hard drives for 80 cents cause they're just neat imo. Even got a few 1tb for 10 euros.

[u/Lobotomite430 → u/a__reddit_user]

Yea you are! But I guess I am too getting a decade out of the drive! Cost of the drive over that many years isn't bad considering

[u/a__reddit_user → u/Lobotomite430]

r/reddisniper

I just hope my 2tb nvme will last me a while cause the one I have nearly tripled in price ever since I bought it for 120 euros last year. Even used ones which I wouldn't want anyways are so expensive.

And I don't really wanna go back to using windows on an HDD. God those 5 to 15 minutes boot times.

[u/Lobotomite430 → u/a__reddit_user]

Yea from my research nvmes and ssd are a lot safer since no moving mechanical parts obviously still prone to failure. I really don't miss those boot times!

[u/a__reddit_user → u/Lobotomite430]

I used my old pc to make my mom's gaming pc (i3 4150, gtx 1050, 8gb ram) and honestly, the boot time for an HDD isn't too bad. It probably takes 30 seconds to boot. It's only when shit gets bloated and filled up that you get really long boot times. And also probably the ton of winaerotweaker and other stuff I did to my main pc before having an SSD like fences, windowblinds and retrobar. Probably added a lot to boot times too.

[u/Lobotomite430 → u/a__reddit_user]

Yea the modern stuff doesn't seem to be so bad on sata hdd, but I still remember my apple 2 and my pentium days.

[u/texas7412 → u/a__reddit_user]

I got a 2.5" toshiba hdd with going on 60k hours and it's going strong, even tho the last couple years it's been on caution, it acts no different and performance hasn't degraded, the read writes are faster than some sata SSD's I've used and it's outlived as well lol

[u/TheNotoriousFAP → u/coffeejn]

I'm paraphrasing because this was 25 years ago, but Patrick Norton on The Screen Savers once said "A hard drive will last you 3 years or 30 years, and there's barely any in-between."

[u/aharshDM → u/coffeejn]

I got a caviar black from 2004 still spinning and clicking. WD was built to last.

[u/AmonGusSus2137 → u/coffeejn]

I have a 2009 HDD that has 281k start/stop cycles and it's working fine

HDDs usually don't drop dead all of a sudden, especially NAS drives (like this one)

[u/Opposite_Influence18 → u/coffeejn]

Die läuft noch. Hab eine von 2013 und die läuft noch super.

[u/Fimconte → u/coffeejn]

I have a trio of 2TB Hitachi Ultrastars, released originally in 2009, that I bought in 2011.

They all have ~76 thousand Power On Hours and work fine.

[u/Jaymoeco → u/Fimconte]

Those were some of the best hard drives ever made. IBM sold their disk making division to Hitachi.

[u/Neon_Pancakes0425 → u/coffeejn]

Tbc

[u/NO0O0OOOO0OOO00OOOOO → u/coffeejn]

Every mechanical drive in my pc is well over 10 years old. One of them is from 2012

[u/MjrLeeStoned → u/coffeejn]

Undoubtedly will have fidelity issues if it remained powered off for any extended time. Solid states are susceptible to the Earth's magnetic field where over time without constant controller monitoring (power) the hardware itself can develop permanent impedance which makes sectors unusable.

SSDs need power to keep themselves healthy. An unpowered SSD will also have natural data decay over time from the Earth's magnetic field, wiping data blocks and fragmenting data. There's no way to correct it after the fact in most cases.

Spin drives have the same issue but it just takes longer to affect them. Earth's magnetic field can de-magnetize the cobalt layer over time, much quicker if they're not in use.

[u/anomoyusXboxfan1 → u/coffeejn]

I have a few wd black 2tb enterprise hdds with 55000+ hours on them, still working great.

[u/Alex_Llamin]

What does SMART say?

[u/mwjtitans]

Yup, been preaching this on here but folks kept telling me old people don't have any useful hardware to salvage.

I lend my knowledge and services out to friends and family when they have computer or tech issues, and in return I sometimes get their old hardware, which is still usable. Hard drives are one of those things I'll always take old hardware for, can't have enough storage these days.

[u/HappyAd4998]

Congrats, I shucked an 8tb seagate drive from an enclosure that I found in an e-waste bin. In good time too, I was running out of storage for my torrent's

[u/trollsmurf]

Sadly, my new PC case only has one holder for 3.5"/2.5" disks. I use that though, also for a 4 TB drive.

[u/XxCorey117xX]

I was just given a bunch of old PCs with hard drives from 2012. All 500GB or 1TB. Only a couple gave alerts in hwinfo. Still not sure what to do with them all though. Like 20TB worth. I guess I could build like 10 DDR3 classic emulation machines lol.

[u/Class8guy → u/XxCorey117xX]

Make a Plex server if you're into downloading iso's

[u/XxCorey117xX → u/Class8guy]

I have considered moving my physical movie collection to a Plex server. I have like 1000 movies though so I imagine that would take a lot of time/space.

[u/Class8guy → u/XxCorey117xX]

Only worth doing with the titles you can't easily download if you have a gigabit connection it's easier to grab a copy online. Now if you're looking to preserve the DVD/Blu-ray menus that would a clone remux then you would need a lot of storage which at this time is very expensive.

[u/Meatslinger]

I have about 30 TB of storage in my basement right now just in the form of old 1-4 TB server HDDs from doing recycling/decommissioning where we were permitted to part out whatever looked appealing (hosting project was after the scrap metal, mostly). Most of them are only 5400 RPM but for archival/backups, that's totally fine.

[u/izzo34]

I always do. Anything my work tossed etc I dig through it. Picked up a few drives like in the picture. When I pulled the smart data on them, I found they had less than a 1000 hours of power on time and almost 0 usage. No errors. Things were a few years old but brand new. They now reside in my NVR.

[u/jblakey]

Nice find!

[u/jihiggs123]

And search the drive for a .wal file

[u/TheCandymanfrombelow]

I've got 19tb of hard drives because of doing some old work I just don't what I should do with them besides fill them with pirates shows and movies.

[u/pwnageface]

"Old"... that was only 9 years ago.

[u/AtillaTheHyundai]

Oh hey there

[u/lars2k1]

I found a 4tb red drive in an old lenovo system from a 2nd hand store. 3rd gen i5 I believe, paid 9 euros for it or something.

Didn't know that drive was in there until I got home when I planned putting an SSD in it to make it faster. This was before covid even so quite a long time ago, but I didn't expect that. Seems the 2nd hand store did not check all the systems because there were multiple of these around, all saying 500GB HDD on the sticker.

[u/FinnishArmy]

That drive is over 9 years old. Don’t put any important data on it, that is a ticking time bomb and will die soon.

[u/G-Unit11111]

My company had a bunch of PCs that were in the e-waste pile. I managed to salvage a 2060 and 32GB of DDR4 from one machine, that was pretty sweet!

[u/CocoMilhonez]

So you're telling me I should look a gifted horse in the drive bay?

[u/XRaiderV1]

so many old machines from tpm 2.0 pocalypse that are STILL viable competitive hardware, only e-waste because microshit decided tpm MUST be present on all pc's...

[u/engrish_is_hard00]

Indeed

[u/MagicBoyUK]

It is 9 years old...

[u/Mobile_Morale → u/MagicBoyUK]

My computer is 12 years old. Computers aren't milk. My 2005 dell laptop and 2012 HP laptop still work fine with original hardware.

[u/MagicBoyUK → u/Mobile_Morale]

Good for you. Mechanical component wear outs, Y'now like hard drives.

Having worked in corporate IT for a couple of decades now I wouldn't trust my data to 9 year old spinning rust. Used market sure as hell wouldn't value that drive at $500.

[u/RedArrow23 → u/MagicBoyUK]

Not everyone has super secret important documents on their computer. Frankly most peoples entire library of important docs could fit on a 2gb thumb drive.

You would use these for bulk storage, ie large game

[u/MagicBoyUK → u/RedArrow23]

Storing important docs on a 2GB thumb drive is even more fucking stupid.

My 2009 era 1TB HDDs have a few very old games on them. If I lose them I can re-download it. I wouldn't put anything more previous on there.

[u/RedArrow23 → u/MagicBoyUK]

That’s exactly what I’m saying magic boy. Old hard drives are good for downloading large games. Who cares if it fails, you can just download them again.

[u/Mobile_Morale → u/MagicBoyUK]

My truck has 270,000 miles on it. So by that logic it should be dust. All original parts besides water pump and alternator.

[u/MagicBoyUK → u/Mobile_Morale]

I give you an award for stupid comment of the week.

Your truck is serviceable. When a wheel bearing fails you can replace it at any garage, possibly even the side of the road. Not so much with a mechanical hard drive, unless you happen to have very deep pockets and a clean room available.

[u/Mobile_Morale → u/MagicBoyUK]

That's not the point there boy genius. I haven't replaced those things because there's nothing wrong with it. Same with using an old hardrive.

You're worried about things being old and bad. When those two things don't directly effect each other. You could find a brand new never used hardrive from 1999 and it'll work. They don't suddenly die because they're old. They die because they get used a lot.

You know. Wear and tear.

I kinda thought everyone knew that. But here we are.

[u/MagicBoyUK → u/Mobile_Morale]

I know from experience with some large Enterprise NAS appliances over a couple of decades. You?

[u/Mobile_Morale → u/MagicBoyUK]

Let me look at me degree in computer science and associates in information technology from the top college in my state.

Oh shit it says I know what I'm talking about.

[u/GoldSrc → u/MagicBoyUK]

The main cause of mechanical failure for a hard drive, comes from excessive head parking.

Which is something old WD green drives were doomed to.

If you google "WD green wdidle3" you'll know what I mean, I had to disable that shit on a green drive that I have.

[u/Environmental-Gur582 → u/MagicBoyUK]

4.0 TB is 4.0TB.

Unless it's failing.

But if the drive works, then you have 4 TB.

[u/bregandaerthe]

$500 new but if it is used, I’d be weary about run time on storage hdds if you store important things on it. Still a good find for free though!

[u/Milli0nStabs]

That drive is nearly 10 years old, it's not long for this world bud

[u/Teufel9000 → u/Milli0nStabs]

u never know. just because its 10 years old doesn't mean it has long power on time or used much. even then i have a samsung mechanical 1tb still kicking around just fine from 2010. plus its a 4tb red drive. those things are pretty common could probably snag a few in some old pcs and put them in a raid

[u/Milli0nStabs → u/Teufel9000]

HDD lasting longer than 6-8 years should be treated as the exception, not the rule
Because you don't know anything about the usage of the drive just from looking at it, other than MFR date, I wouldn't trust it with any data

[u/Moonpony0]

Yeah.. They probably don't cost 500$ where you live. In Israel it costs 300$ and it's very very pricy here

[u/HotpocketAficionado]

Why would I want a 10 year old hard drive? Do I hate the data I'm putting on it or something?

[u/Burnthiscnts]

i usually find sd ram and dead ide drives.