Member OP
The shucked drives are cheap cheap but im tired of dealing with 3.3v pin issues and recieving drives with 40k hours already. Want real datacenter spinners, SAS or SATA, 8TB+. Where you all sourcing? My budget is $80/drive max. Found some "recertified" on racknerd.com but idk if legit. Also looked at KnownHost auctions. Anyone got a hookup with actual decom hardware?
Member
I bought these Dell enterprise drives last year from a recycler on ebay and they were cheap but the thing is Dell locks the firmware so they wont spin up on a normal LSI HBA and I spent three days trying to figure out why and my cat kept walking across the keyboard while I was troubleshooting and it was raining that day and I had cold coffee for breakfast because the server was down and I couldnt warm it up and the drives just sat there clicking until I found out about the Dell blocking and you need to either get a Dell HBA or flash the drives with stock firmware and I ended up doing the firmware thing with a spinbite cable and it worked but it was a whole ordeal and the recycler didnt mention any of this and I left them bad feedback and they messaged me angry and I said well maybe tell people next time and my cat still walks on keyboards but now I have 8TB enterprise drives that work fine on my Contabo box and they were only €65 each so I guess it was worth it but Seriously verify the firmware situation before you buy
Member
¡jajaja! @bravomartha is very passionate about this topic, I appreciate.
The dell firmware lock is very common with decom hardware. I buy alot from Hetzner surplus auctions. Their drives are very clean, very tested, but you must check if "compatibility" firmware or stock. Is very easy to miss.
I wrote a long guide about reading dell firmware with sg_write_buffer but I deleted it. Too many steps. Buy from pablowild approved sellers instead ¿ok? Jajaja.
Lol
Nice
Wow
80 bux for 8TB enterprise? Good luck lol
Member
Which LSI firmware version were you running when the Dell lock hit?
Member
P20, the one everyone flashes to. IT mode, not IR. The drives showed up in lsscsi but capacity was zero bytes. Sg_readcap just hung. That's the tell. If you see the device but no size, it's probably firmware lock.
I should mention the recycler was ServerMonkey, not some random. Even they didn't flag it.
Member
P20 has known issues with Dell branded drives actually. P19 or the newer P21 are better for mixed firmware. I keep a spreadsheet. The zero byte thing is exactly what I saw with P20 + Dell MG03SCA300s.
Also if you're on FreeBSD the mps driver behaves differently than mpt3sas on Linux. Another trap.
Member OP
So Hetzner surplus is the move? Their auction site is hetzner.com/sb right? I only ever bought their servers, never individual parts. Do they ship drives to US or is that EU only?
Also re: €80 vs $80, I'm in Texas so that's like $88 now, still tight I know.
Member
No. Hetzner auction is server only, no component shipping outside Germany without big customs headache. You need freight forwarder or friend in EU. Not worth for one drive.
Better for you: look at SaveMyServer or TheServerStore, both in US. They sell decom Dell/HP by the tray. SAS3 12Gbps, real smart data, no firmware games. But 8TB at $80? Maybe if you buy 10. Single drive, no.
I pay €45 for 4TB SAS Hetzner clean. 8TB is €90+ always.
