Hard drives and SSDs keep moving the heart of any hardware freak, but they also literally keep moving, and that wears them out. They need extra attention when testing, also for their data risks, of course. Here’s an overview of how we deal with our drives to offer them to you in as pristine condition as possible, with an accurate description.
If you see a listing, it means we tested the drive. Nothing at iuppiter goes untested, so that our stuff is ready to go into your own system and do the work the moment you get it.
Item descriptions
We have our own system of photographing items (fixed set of angles, lightning, the whole shebang). Some drives will have more signs of use - say, scratches or rack marks. That’s normal for a small silver box that worked very hard in a data center. We don’t consider such regular wear a defect and we don’t list it separately, but you can see it in the photos. What you see is what you get. If you’re unsure about something you saw, ask us before you bid.
If any part is broken, non-working or missing, we write it in the listing, whether you can spot it on the photos or not.
Our drives come clean. We erase all their data to NIST SP 800-88 (Clear/Purge) on ADISA-certified erasure equipment. No previous storage remains and we have an erasure record for every drive.
We often sell lots of drives, or in the lingo: a drive lot. It can contain one drive or several hundred of them. Every drive in the lot has the same model, capacity, interface, and the health grade. We state that in the listing and get it from our test results, see below. The photos show the units from the said lot, but individual labels, date codes, or firmware stickers may vary per drive.
Testing & grades
Every hard drive and SSD gets fully tested once it enters our warehouse. We do a full cycle on our test platform: a complete surface scan of every sector, certified data erasure, and a read-back verification. The whole run takes up to a day for every single drive.
SMART data predicts drive life based on defective sectors, whether the defects appeared during our testing, hours of use, and NAND wear for SSDs. Out of this data comes the health score (0-100%) that becomes our grade.
Here’s how the grade works:
• Grade A (100%) - No defects, barely used. Used doesn’t get any closer to new than this.
• Grade B (90–99%) - Passes a full surface scan clean. The used stock is solid: it has at most a few reallocated sectors or just a long, long service history.
• Grade C (80–89%) - Working, but with visible aging: some sectors reallocated during our testing, or there’s moderate SSD wear.
• Grade D (70–79%) - Working but worn. More reallocated sectors or heavier wear. Priced accordingly.
• Grade E (40–69%) - End of the line. Runs and passed our tests, but old or heavily worn. For scratch arrays, testing, tinkering - not for data you love.
• Grade F (below 40%) - Failing media. We don't sell these, ew. F-grade hard drives don't even enter our warehouse.
We keep a strict grade. We grade on behaviour under a full-surface workload, not on a snapshot. And we consider a drive that’s actively deteriorating the real trouble, not the one with a few old reallocations. If a drive developed new defects on our test bench, it drops hard, no matter if its history looks good on paper. Not on our paper, not on our watch.
Being smart about numbers
That’s why our grading can differ from what a simple SMART tool tells you. Plus, health reporting isn’t fully standardized, especially for SSDs, so another tool may show a different health percentage than our grade. The grade we present reflects the drive’s condition on our test equipment, under full load, at the moment of testing.
But you don’t need to take our word for it. We present the numbers behind every drive lot: power-on hours, reallocated sector count, and SSD wear level.
As a rule of thumb, we don't offer a commercial warranty on drives. Some items will have it, though, so check the product description. If it mentions the warranty, it's there. If it doesn't, it's not.
Besides the warranty, you have a 14-day cooling off period - if you change your mind within that time, you can return the item, no questions asked. See how to do that here.
Do you have any questions? Ask us before you bid. Email at info@auction-it.com and we’ll answer within 48 hours.
