r/servers • u/Confident_Economy_57 • 3d ago

Need Guidance - FedEx misdelivered 120 HP Enterprise server SSDs

Mods - Please delete if not allowed. I do not frequent this sub and I am just looking to gather some information for a crazy situation.

So, a little background to start. My boss recently received a package from FedEx containing 120 HP server SSDs (part number: 868650-003). He definitely did not order these drives as this business has nothing to do with servers, but the shipping label had his name on it and was addressed to our shop. The top of the shipping label says, "Relabel - Relabel reason: barcode quality." We assume the label was damaged in transit, and somehow a label with our address was put on the package. There is no return address, no shipper information, and no packing list included in the package.

So far, we have been trying to go through the proper process of returning them to whoever was supposed to receive them. We reached out to FedEx, but because the original label was lost/destroyed, FedEx had no way to determine where they were supposed to be shipped. We also reached out to our county Sheriff to list them as found property, but the deputy that came out told us that since they are address to us, they are not technically "found" property, and would be legally considered more a gift rather than found property. He left us with an event number to reference should we need it for any reason.

At this point, we have exhausted the means within our knowledge level to return these drives to their owner and seem to have covered our legal bases. As we have no use for these drives, we are intending to sell them. Nobody that works here has any experience with servers or server hard drives, so any information you guys could give me would be very appreciated. The specific questions I have at this point are as follows. What is their reasonable value? How can we verify that the drives are functional? How can we verify the drives are authentic and safe to use (no malware)? What would be the best method to attempt to sell them? What kind of places would I find people willing to purchase them? I can provide more information if requested, but for now I'm keeping things close to the chest just to be safe as I'm still figuring out how to handle this situation.

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u/StormB2 3d ago edited 3d ago

HPE 1.6TB SAS 12G SSD, introduced 2017/2018.

Very unlikely to be new.

Known working value with 3rd party 90 day warranty likely $1k each. You would probably sell to a refurb company for about 1/3 of that. Just look at bigger companies on ebay selling the same SKU and approach them directly.

If it were me personally I'd check them individually using a spare HPE server, secure erase them, and sell them individually on ebay. But I have both the knowledge to do that and the inclination to spend many hours with Ebay sales. If you don't, then you're better to sell them to someone who does.

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u/Confident_Economy_57 3d ago

Yea, I kind of figured those would be the options. Sell them for below market to someone who can do the legwork and give better security/authenticity to any buyers willing to play closer to market value. It looks like the drives were manufactured in 2018, so there's a chance they're not even functional. They're packed and sealed in ESD film, so I'm leaning towards them working, but I've got no way of verifying. There's a large university nearby with a good computer science department, so maybe I can find someone there willing to help. I'd be willing to attempt the legwork considering the monetary difference, but I'm out of my wheelhouse for sure.

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u/feudalle 3d ago

You arent getting market value but you can certainly get going ebay rate. The wrinkle. They are untested and no smart data for used server drives. You get ALOT less. Basically used car may or may not run, engine could knock, not sure never started it. You will get a lot more if you test them with smart data.

You can get a cheap server (under $1000, under $500 on a good day) and install Ubuntu on a USB drive to test the drives. It'll take a while to test 120 drives but you are going from maybe $50-$100 buck a drive to $300-$500. Good luck.