Buy old hard drives with long life

Cost savings are nearly half, consumers can buy used hard drives on the market. However, if there is no experience to choose from, buyers will easily encounter many products that are about to 'leave'.

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Old hard drives are on sale at many small stores. Photo: HT

Just need about 200,000-300,000 VND, you can buy yourself an old hard drive (HDD) with capacity from 40-120 GB. Even with the need for high-capacity storage, 250 GB drives with a price of only VND 450,000-500,000 is an appropriate choice. Most 'second hand' hard drives are warranted for only 1 month if purchased at the store. In addition, if you buy from work to hand, this time limit is only 3-7 days.

According to Mr. Tran Minh Hung, the owner of the computer shop on Vo Van Ngan Street, Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, said: 'The price of HDD has now dropped by about 50% compared to the previous year so the old products have dropped to enough. competitiveness in the market '. New types of products are usually warranted for 3-5 years and have a price of 700,000-2.5 million VND with a capacity of 80-1000 GB.

However, many people still find old products because of attractive prices and if they can still buy products that can be used for a long time. 'The old hard drive is also a pretty good solution for temporary use when there is not enough funding for new types. Or because HDD is using an immortal 'death', the old product of high capacity is also a temporary emergency to be able to run the machine, 'said Nguyen Tan Hung, District 3.

According to Mr. Nam, when choosing old goods, consumers need to check carefully both outside and use software to check for common errors of hard drives such as: mechanical, reader, bad sectors (small units error most on disk) .

The first step is to plug the hard drive into the power jack and apply the ear to listen to the mechanical system working. These components run smoothly and it can be concluded that 60% of its life is still high. In addition, when the hard drive when running emits a rather strong knock (the reader starts reading information on the disk surface) or 'clinking' constantly, most of them have encountered a firmware error (the program is installed by the manufacturer). Preset on the board) or the reader will no longer be used. With firmware error, if there is no dedicated device, the repair is also very difficult to even lose data, absolutely impossible to deliver if taken to the center. Besides, too old or buckled readers should make a sound so it is easy to scratch the disc surface and it will easily happen if you lose permanently important data.

In addition, with the most common hard drive error being bad sectors, buyers can preliminarily check via boot speed, run some software or copy data. If these activities have uneven handling, when it is slow and slow, or sometimes standing for a long time, the risk of HDD being bad is quite high.

To be more careful you can also use the software to be able to check the bad sector error level with the HDD scanning software available in Hirent Boot disk (the boot disk has some system management software integrated in the environment. Dos school).

Boot with Hirent Boot disk: select Hard Disk Tool -> Victoria . Type "P" to select Primary , then press F4 so the program can check the partition from start to finish.

Blue, red, white, gray, striped points will show the reading speed in that data area. Blue and red spots, more and more show that the hard drive is too old. Besides, the X points show the bad sector fault location. This sign should not exceed 2-3 points on a hard drive. Because the possibility of spreading these errors is entirely possible.

The read / write speed (bottom right corner) of the drive is also important for you to check your life. HDD types with display parameters of 40,000 Kb / s or more can be used for more than 1 year.

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A hard drive test sample has a lot of errors and very slow reading speed: 3.895 Kb / s.
Screenshots

' If you are not careful, users may encounter many tricks to sell old hard drives of poor quality or cannot be used ,' said Nguyen Dang Duc, computer shop Dat Viet, district. Binh Thanh said.

Many tricksters can disguise themselves with packaging, new packaging or stamps that have been exchanged so they can be viewed by the buyer by checking on the computer. Because according to Mr. Duc, these operations are quite easy for long-time technicians. Many people who do not have much time should be assured when the old product sticker is still under warranty and only viewed outside.

In addition, many stores often use tips to 'cut' off defective data areas so that easy to get rid of older products. To detect users simply go to Computer Management utility in Windows operating system (Right-click My computer select Mangage -> Storage - Disk Managerment): if the display has 'Unallocated' partitions, it is likely This data range was intentionally hidden to hide the error due to the slow read speed.

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The cut off partition (red) has the word unallocated. Screenshots

At the same time, many workers may not install the operating system into the first partition (faulty) but take advantage of one of the following partitions so that the buyer has a fast, stable drive speed feeling. But the bad sector reality will gradually spread to these partitions after a short time of use. And by that time, the store's warranty responsibility was gone.

Not only through preliminary tests, choosing the old hard drive based on brands is also quite effective.

According to Mr. Vo Van An, a technician in District 5 said: ' The old hard drives of manufacturers such as Seagate, Samsung or Hitachi often give a longer shelf life '.

Old products of Maxtor, Fujitsu, IBM, Quantum, Western Digital . often encounter many errors during use. Slim Maxtor, Western Digital, and Fujitsu often break the board if using 'cheap' power supplies. Although the main part has no problems but if the warranty period passes, the replacement of this part will cause consumers to encounter many troubles.

Besides, the type of thick Maxtor which is quite popular in the past often suffers from bad sector errors during its use. And IBM, Quantum is much more resilient than the others, less bad, but if not careful during use, power supplies can make them "dead" that cannot be fixed.

If forced to buy old products, experts recommend that consumers should choose to buy at reputable locations that fully support the inspection. For units that allow direct testing by mechanical or software, you should choose the locations that are familiar or with the introduction of experienced people. In addition, the use of power supplies costing about VND 300,000 or more will greatly limit the prolongation of the life of used HDDs.