Reliable preowned vendors for homelab hardware

[dvader]

What do you use your managed switch for? Vlans?
I just subnet my network.

Not just VLANs which are absolutely good to have. You get all sorts of extra features, routing, monitoring, etc as I said it's QoL improvements. Saves time when you are scratching your head over something and you can login to your switch and actually see what the hell is happening.

 

[rudiv]

Share the vendor details then?

Sorry, missed this.

AVS Infomedia in Nehru Place is whom I go to for new components.
For used/refurb stuff I usually go with one of the following:
- AMS Trading in Janakpuri
- VS Computers in Nehru Place
I trust AMS a good bit more than VS Computers but still test everything I buy thoroughly.
Finally, when working with clients who can afford to pay for good hardware I sometimes buy servers from Zaco Computers.

It's important to remember that in a real sense, they're all shit though.

 

[badwhitevision]

Anyone here has played Russian roulette with customs on eBay shipping especially with regards to HDDs?
I have a homelab setup, it runs a lot of things but mainly Jellyfin and my *ahem* Linux ISOs *ahem* no longer seem to fit into the drives I have.
I see a lot of classifieds here about HDDs and the reseller thread by @aasimenator . However, being extremely new, I do not have access to comment on those pages I guess.

Anyways, I ask this because I wonder how people managed to get these drives. I live in a tier 1 city and anything above 4 TB is solely surveillance drives and the prices are a but mind numbing.

I have played Russian roulette with customs but mostly on Chinese imports that are low cost and most probably too small to even be bothering the customs officials. However I highly doubt that would be the case with HDDs.

I could ask someone to hand carry from the US, but that brings with it, it's own set of problems such as warranty and RMA, especially refurbished drives.

 

[guest_999]

Anyone here has played Russian roulette with customs on eBay shipping especially with regards to HDDs?

No need to do that either, even within India one shouldn't rely on purchasing internal hdd from amazon/flipkart given the way packaging & shipping is handled let alone getting an internal hdd shipped from a cheap store front in china.

However, being extremely new, I do not have access to comment on those pages I guess.

Since you tagged him he might PM you his contact details so you can continue the conversation elsewhere.

I could ask someone to hand carry from the US, but that brings with it, it's own set of problems such as warranty and RMA, especially refurbished drives.

Rule of thumb is, one buy multiple refurbished hdd at cheap enough cost & stress test them for few days by writing on them for entire drive size at least twice & if they survive then assuming 20% failure rate of worst case scenario after maybe 1-2 years the RMA can be neglected altogether (btw the most popular refurbished hdd store in US on reddit seem to sell with 2 years warranty).

 

[badwhitevision]

No need to do that either, even within India one shouldn't rely on purchasing internal hdd from amazon/flipkart given the way packaging & shipping is handled let alone getting an internal hdd shipped from a cheap store front in china.

Fair enough. Although I must say it depends on the seller (Both Flipkart, Amazon and eBay), have had well packed goods with international shipping from China.

Since you tagged him he might PM you his contact details so you can continue the conversation elsewhere.

He has reached and we are discussing.

Rule of thumb is, one buy multiple refurbished hdd at cheap enough cost & stress test them for few days by writing on them for entire drive size at least twice & if they survive then assuming 20% failure rate of worst case scenario after maybe 1-2 years the RMA can be neglected altogether (btw the most popular refurbished hdd store in US on reddit seem to sell with 2 years warranty).

Thank you, will follow this when I buy refurbed drives. I assumed a test with CrystalDiskMark and HDSentinel would be more than enough.

Also forgive me for going OT, but is there a dedicated thread for self hosted services in this forum, because I couldn't find any. Most are about ProxMox, which I haven't yet tried.

 

[guest_999]

I assumed a test with CrystalDiskMark and HDSentinel would be more than enough.

More specifically, do a full format/use bitlocker full drive encryption if on windows which is equivalent to writing whole drive completely. If on linux then use badblocks.

Also forgive me for going OT, but is there a dedicated thread for self hosted services in this forum, because I couldn't find any. Most are about ProxMox, which I haven't yet tried.

Not sure but you can take a look in this section & find some members who seem to have a good knowledge as per your view.

Home Automation & Networking

Discussion about Home Automation, Routers, modems and other networking hardware and related talk goes here.

techenclave.com

 

[vivek.krishnan]

More specifically, do a full format/use bitlocker full drive encryption if on windows which is equivalent to writing whole drive completely. If on linux then use badblocks.


Not sure but you can take a look in this section & find some members who seem to have a good knowledge as per your view.

Home Automation & Networking

Discussion about Home Automation, Routers, modems and other networking hardware and related talk goes here.

techenclave.com

Optionally, you can also run a full chkdsk with /r flag - this has worked well for me in the past. Look out for SMART sector realloc increases - this will indicate the drive is toast or soon to be