Storage in Lahore

Buying storage second-hand

Storage is the one category where the component tells you how much life it has left, and almost nobody asks. Every SSD records how much data has been written to it and what percentage of its rated endurance is gone; every hard disk records its power-on hours and its reallocated sector count. A five-minute check separates a drive with years left from one that is nearly done.

Treat a drive with no wear figures available as an unknown, and price it accordingly. Be especially careful with drives pulled from servers or mining rigs — high power-on hours alone are not fatal for an SSD, but combined with a high write total they mean the cells are genuinely used up. For a hard disk, any reallocated sectors at all is a reason to walk away.

What to check before you pay

• Read the SMART data: percentage used and total bytes written for an SSD, power-on hours and reallocated sectors for a hard disk.
• Run a sustained write test — many worn drives are fine in short bursts and collapse under sustained load.
• Confirm the interface and form factor fit your board: NVMe and SATA M.2 drives look identical and are not interchangeable.
• Ask what the drive was used for. Continuous server or surveillance duty is very different from a desktop.

Read how to benchmark anything before you buy it →