That 'refurbished' SSD I bought cost me 12 hours of work last Tuesday

I picked up a 2TB NVMe drive from a reseller on eBay for $90, thinking I got a steal. Installed it in a client's Dell Optiplex and spent half the day rebuilding their accounting software setup. By 4pm the drive just vanished from the BIOS, no warning, no errors. Turns out the SMART data showed 40,000 power-on hours and heavy reallocated sectors. I went back to my usual source (Micro Center) and paid $150 for a new one that worked fine. Has anyone else gotten burned by these 'like new' drives from sketchy online sellers?

3 comments

3 Comments

campbell.tara25d agoMost Upvoted

Did you check the SMART data before installing it? I used to think refurbished parts were fine for clients too, but after losing a whole weekend to a dead drive I'm done gambling on eBay.

james_kim25d ago

Haha yeah that's fair, but would you trust a refurb if the seller had like a 30 day return policy or is it just a hard no across the board now?

piper_reed18d ago

Flip it around and say $90 gamble hit and $60 saved.