UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Powered By Google Custom Search Vintage Radio and TV Service Data

Go Back   UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum > General Vintage Technology > Where To Get Sets and Parts

Notices

Where To Get Sets and Parts For discussions about swapmeets, rallies, NVCF and BVWS, car boot sales, antique and charity shops, dealers, newspaper adverts, the local tip and just about any other source of equipment (other than eBay).

Closed Thread
 
Thread Tools
Old 26th Nov 2018, 6:13 pm   #1
brunel
Heptode
 
brunel's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: LEEDS.......North of the River Aire.
Posts: 872
Default Cheap hard drives

https://cpc.farnell.com/wd/wd3200avv...3gb/dp/CS31967

The full list: https://cpc.farnell.com/search?st=re...e&utm_campaign

Last edited by brunel; 26th Nov 2018 at 6:15 pm. Reason: Added extra link
brunel is offline  
Old 26th Nov 2018, 6:29 pm   #2
paulsherwin
Moderator
 
paulsherwin's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Oxford, UK
Posts: 27,787
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

They are certainly cheap enough, but you should note that they are 'recertified' so have an uncertain history. They are likely to be fine, but you may not want to use them for anything really critical.
paulsherwin is offline  
Old 26th Nov 2018, 6:45 pm   #3
MrBungle
Dekatron
 
MrBungle's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: London, UK.
Posts: 3,687
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

I wouldn't touch them myself. You'll find WD drives usually have a 2 or 5 year warranty depending on grade. These have 1 year. Plus they are mechanical.

A 250Gb Samsung SSD costs £55. A crucial 240Gb one costs £37. Both on Amazon. This tech is dead other than for archival and you want new, reliable drives for that!
MrBungle is offline  
Old 26th Nov 2018, 6:56 pm   #4
Paul Stenning
Administrator
 
Paul Stenning's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Cardiff
Posts: 9,060
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

I won't touch recertified drives either. In my experience the likelihood of a further failure is much higher, around 50% of the ones I have encountered in the past had failed or were showing SMART warnings.

Basically they are faulty disks that have been fixed by hiding the bad sectors or even disabling a head/platter (with the capacity reduced and model number changed if necessary), and SMART data reset to hide the history.

They are often sent out by drive manufacturers as warranty exchanges. If I ever get one it goes straight onto eBay or to CeX.

If you want mechanical drives buy them new. They aren't expensive and are much less of a gamble then these recertified ones.
__________________

Paul Stenning
Forum Admin/Owner and BVWS Webmaster
Paul Stenning is offline  
Old 26th Nov 2018, 7:08 pm   #5
Guest
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

Yes, SSDs are getting ridiculously cheap these days.
 
Old 26th Nov 2018, 7:29 pm   #6
Nuvistor
Dekatron
 
Nuvistor's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Wigan, Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 9,427
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

I have just bought a Crucial 500GB drive for around £65 to replace the two and a half year old 250GB SSD. The new larger drive was cheaper than the old one.

The old SSD will be installed in a portable caddy for data backup..
__________________
Frank
Nuvistor is offline  
Old 26th Nov 2018, 8:02 pm   #7
woodchips
Octode
 
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Grantham, Lincolnshire, UK.
Posts: 1,172
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

Ah yes, but the SSD drives aren't actually guaranteed to last, from what I have read. Unless you use them they will slowly, years, fade and die.

A mechanical drive doesn't suffer from this, if you put it in a RAID then the whole point of that is to provide restoration if one drive fails.

My experience of mechanical drives is that they are very reliable. And the data doesn't fade with the passage of time.
woodchips is offline  
Old 26th Nov 2018, 8:23 pm   #8
Nuvistor
Dekatron
 
Nuvistor's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Wigan, Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 9,427
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

Both types have their problems, choose the type that suits your usage. SSD’s tend to be faster than standard PC HDD’s, that may not be the same for the 10,000 and 15,000rpm server drives. HDD’s are usually less expensive for very large capacities.

If the data is important I would not want to leave either a SDD or HDD on the shelf for years and be certain of it working.
__________________
Frank
Nuvistor is offline  
Old 26th Nov 2018, 9:21 pm   #9
MrBungle
Dekatron
 
MrBungle's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: London, UK.
Posts: 3,687
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

Decent SSDs are way more reliable. Orders of magnitude. And when they do fail they fail slowly and predictably with reallocations and lifespan metrics falling rather than “clunk and the data is gone”.

Genuine desktop usage write lifespan is around 300 years. Retention is 10 years+. And that’s just the crap drives.

I say this from experience as we replaced all of our spinning rust with SSDs over the last two years across servers and desktops totalling 500 odd drives. I haven’t heard of a single failure yet.

Really the only reason they sell mechanical disks now is price/Gb is still better. That’s the only metric and that’s rapidly disappearing.
MrBungle is offline  
Old 26th Nov 2018, 9:34 pm   #10
Guest
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

I opened my latest 500Gb SSD*, a pcb about 2x1 inches, four large memory chips and a smaller one, I guess 4Tb would fit easily. The rest was air!

*It's what one does with a new bit of kit, buy, take apart, reassemble, turn on, use and then read the manual.
 
Old 26th Nov 2018, 9:59 pm   #11
MrBungle
Dekatron
 
MrBungle's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: London, UK.
Posts: 3,687
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

First thing I did when I got mine as well, although I never read the manual
MrBungle is offline  
Old 26th Nov 2018, 10:35 pm   #12
Guest
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

Reading the manual post operation is a handy parity check.
 
Old 26th Nov 2018, 10:47 pm   #13
wave solder
Hexode
 
wave solder's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Chesterfield, Derbyshire, UK.
Posts: 481
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

I bought a few 2Tb SAS drives for what they cost for my RAID array, will see what happens with them...
wave solder is online now  
Old 26th Nov 2018, 11:42 pm   #14
McMurdo
Dekatron
 
McMurdo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Staffordshire Moorlands, UK.
Posts: 5,263
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

can you get PATA solid state drives?
__________________
Kevin
McMurdo is offline  
Old 27th Nov 2018, 12:26 am   #15
Paul JD
Pentode
 
Join Date: Oct 2018
Location: Coventry, West Midlands, UK.
Posts: 220
Default Re: Cheap hard drives


https://www.google.co.uk/search?source=hp&ei=dID8W8ynEozpsAe0vbqoDQ&q=pata+ ssd&btnK=Google+Search&oq=pata+ssd&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l8j0i22i30l2.2846.13934..15826...0.0..0.88. 558.8......0....1..gws-wiz.....0..0i131j0i10.JAVYGV8PrcM


Looks like the answer is yes
Paul JD is offline  
Old 27th Nov 2018, 12:31 am   #16
paulsherwin
Moderator
 
paulsherwin's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Oxford, UK
Posts: 27,787
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

As far as I'm aware, PATA SSDs are all NOS.
paulsherwin is offline  
Old 27th Nov 2018, 4:21 am   #17
arjoll
Dekatron
 
arjoll's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Invercargill, New Zealand
Posts: 3,440
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

Quote:
Originally Posted by woodchips View Post
Ah yes, but the SSD drives aren't actually guaranteed to last, from what I have read. Unless you use them they will slowly, years, fade and die.
A mechanical drive doesn't suffer from this, if you put it in a RAID then the whole point of that is to provide restoration if one drive fails.
I'd never sell either hard drive or SSD as being 100% reliable. They all fail - but I'd pick SSD over HDD. If you want reliability, then redundancy and backup are where you should be heading.

In terms of performance, I had a client with write performance issues on a RAID10 15k SAS HDD array. After lots of to-ing and fro-ing, I added a couple of mixed use HPE SATA enterprise SSDs in RAID1 into the mix, and moved the VM over to that. Instant improvement, even though I'd normally have never considered SATA for server use, being SSD masked the issues with things like queue depth. Server was HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen 9 with SmartArray P440ar, 2 GB FBWC - just standard stuff.
arjoll is offline  
Old 27th Nov 2018, 10:10 am   #18
radioman
Heptode
 
radioman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Ayr, Ayrshire, UK.
Posts: 630
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

Well, I was just about to order the 40Gb one of those : https://cpc.farnell.com/samsung/mp04...20hard%20drive
to fix an old laptop I've got, but now I'm not so sure..
It needs to be 2.5" and have an EIDE interface.
I've never used SSD's but they seem much more expensive and have a lower capacity.
If these CPC ones aren't a good idea, what would you suggest I do ?

Andy
radioman is online now  
Old 27th Nov 2018, 10:37 am   #19
Paul Stenning
Administrator
 
Paul Stenning's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Cardiff
Posts: 9,060
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

For EIDE there isn't a lot of choice, either second hand or refurbished, and both are a gamble. Not much point in buying an SSD for such an elderly laptop, as it won't be able to run an operating system modern enough to properly support SSDs.

At least the CPC ones have a warranty (although that doesn't cover any data on the disk) and are cheap enough.

Make sure you have backups of anything important. Never rely on a single drive as the only place data is stored, regardless of type or age etc.
__________________

Paul Stenning
Forum Admin/Owner and BVWS Webmaster
Paul Stenning is offline  
Old 27th Nov 2018, 10:37 am   #20
Nuvistor
Dekatron
 
Nuvistor's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Wigan, Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 9,427
Default Re: Cheap hard drives

For that price in an old laptop I would give it a try, how old is the laptop, the drive may out last other items in the computer.
Just have good backups.

Crossed post with Paul but the same advice.
__________________
Frank
Nuvistor is offline  
Closed Thread

Thread Tools



All times are GMT +1. The time now is 11:14 pm.


All information and advice on this forum is subject to the WARNING AND DISCLAIMER located at https://www.vintage-radio.net/rules.html.
Failure to heed this warning may result in death or serious injury to yourself and/or others.


Powered by vBulletin®
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Copyright ©2002 - 2023, Paul Stenning.