In the context of this article, "safe" concerning a hard drive means "least likely to have mechanical failure".

While true you can buy 1TB drives new for under $150 easily, there are tens of thousands of platter-based hard drives out there that are used and much cheaper – but which are the safest?

Laptop HDDs

Rich’s recommendation: Bad, avoid.

The 2.5-inch variant of HDDs, better known as the kind that live our their life in a laptop, are usually most prone to early mechanical failure; the reason for this is because they’re all enclosed in a tight chassis (read: exposed to more heat) and usually get physically banged around a bit.

You may get lucky and come across a used 2.5-inch HDD that was in a laptop that sat on a desk all its life, but that’s usually not the situation. Chances are likely the only reason a laptop HDD was replaced to begin with was because it had read failures. Of course, you won’t know that until you actually get the thing, install it and discover the unit is 2 steps away from the trash can as far as usefulness is concerned.

Server HDDs

Rich’s recommendation: Good, but probably slow.

The best way to describe any hard drive that was dedicated to server duty is that it’s "tired". The HDD should work, be error-free and provide several years of reliable service, but don’t expect the performance to be fast because it won’t be. HDDs that were dedicated to file server duty have lived good lives and were usually well cared for, but by the time you get them the read/write speeds will be noticeably slower compared to if it was new. As long as you know this up front, it’s usually a sound purchase.

Consumer HDDs

Rich’s recommendation: Good, as long as you know where it came from

With used consumer HDDs it’s a total crapshoot because you will either get something that’s really great or really awful.

An example of ‘really great’ is acquiring a hard drive out of a computer box where the OS was destroyed by spyware. Some people are really stupid when it comes to computers, and their stupidity is your gain. If the stupid person has a Dell box that’s under 2 years old but the computer is otherwise completely unusable because of all the spyware on it, said stupid person will simply get rid of the entire computer for a new one. If you’re lucky enough to acquire a box like this, you now have a hard drive that was barely used and should last at least 5 years. Get the drive, wipe the partition(s), low-level format it, format it and you’re good to go.

You will find many Dell and like boxes on Craigslist selling for dirt cheap because the former owner spyware’d the crap out of it due to their own ignorance. The seller of course won’t say this, but their loss is your gain. And yes I do recommend just outright buying the whole computer, taking the parts you need and toss out (or recycle if possible) the rest.

An example of ‘really awful’ is consumer HDDs being sold on their own as truly used (meaning not refurbished) in lots from recycler warehouses. This is not to say that those who work in computer recycling centers don’t know what they’re doing, but let’s face it, they don’t have the proper tools that drive recovery shops do. Fortunately, most people have common sense when it comes to purchases of this type, and if a few used HDDs fail out of a lot of 10, it’s usually not a big deal because you acquired them so cheap to begin with.

If you do decide to buy a lot of HDDs, the general rule of thumb is more is better. For example, if you only need 3 drives but the lot is 5 and the price is right, buy the 5. Chances are you’ll find a use for the other 2 at some point in the future.

Lastly, if the idea of buying lots of hard drives seems like an attractive option, search eBay for hard drive lot. Storage spaces range anywhere from 40GB to 250GB and above, and many do offer returns for drives received that don’t work should you encounter a dud or two.

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