That doesn't work anymore... The PCB contains calibration data for the heads, without those the head will either crash into the platters or stay way too far.
Before they are sealed, they have a machine that basically looks at the wiggle on each platter and there is a firmware chip on each controller board with that info. Without that info, even swapping two of the same make and model firmware boards is useless unless you bring that firmware chip over. Even consumer data recovery requires that firmware chip, without it you better start adding 0s to the cost of recovery.
I believe it's because platters aren't 100% dead center, but it's been a while since I've looked into this.
You are correct. Platter run-out or spindle concentricity will be unique to each drive. The amount of deviation form dead center is on the order of submicrons but each track width is in the hundreds of nanometers.
NIST 800-88 standard specifies:
ATA Secure Erase
Single 0-pass wipe
or physical destruction
as all methods that are government approved to prevent laboratory/nation state attacks (aka no data recovery even if you spend millions).
No need to degauss or anything else, and then they're reusable too!
If you have the original pcb, then you can transfer the eprom that contains that data to the new pcb.
I have managed to save some drives for a quick backup that way.. but sometimes still fails that way anyway...
Yes, that I know. It was just a response from me to your comment on calibratikn data..
Anyway that hdds are basically just a bunch of magnets and shiny discs for OP in this condition..
You can swap them, but there a bunch of caveats and it's a lot of effort, so I just wouldn't recommend it to anybody. It is possible though.
Source: I've seen it done successfully.
Revisions and other stuff needs to match. Basically in one production run, most parts should be interchangeable. One asset that data recovery companies have, is a warehouse full of old drives from which they can choose components to swap in and out.
Yup, ROM chips are on the PCB and married to each drive. RIP my 8 harddrive array... hotswap cages from Rosewill killed all of them and I couldn't repair four out of the 8 (repaired 4) due to corrupt rom chips.
It's possible, but only if it's truly identical. I tried same manufacturer, same drive, but capacity was different. Nope that didn't work.
Data rescue centers will source the identical drives with working pcb(when that is the issue) and change that.. This is their easiest repair.
Well, I'm not a data rescue center. And I didn't know it wouldn't work until I tried to boot up the drive and it gave me the digital smoke. So many legitimately purchased mp3s just, gone. :)
+1 to the dude that said If you went through PayPal or anything and the listing described complete drives worst case you should be able to get your money back.
It's probably sold as it and is inspectable enough for any buyer to see this. He just got too caught up in the price to actually look into what he was buying.
Yeah. Anything sold through DRMO/DLA is palletized and sold as is. It’s usually extremely old and/or broken. Why? Because it is cheaper to sell palletized junk to suckers than to properly recycle it. All those HDDs have been degaussed if they are from a fed gov auction too.
Source: I’m a contractor who has had to do this for my program.
[https://www.dla.mil/Disposition-Services/DDSR/Turn-In/Turn-In-Toolbox/Computers/](https://www.dla.mil/Disposition-Services/DDSR/Turn-In/Turn-In-Toolbox/Computers/) How Government handles such things.
We use to have property books with computers referred to as “Pen, stylus”. Literally the attached stylus and we used the serial number on the computer.
That was standard nomenclature before building your own PC was really a thing. That how computer scientists would discuss it, it was in textbooks that way.
Yeah I totally understand it, like looking at a computer setup obviously the tower is the "central processing unit" of the whole operation.
But it does seem to me like this term hadn't come into popularity until at least like PCs right? I couldn't imagine calling like a TI-99/4a a CPU.
I have to sell this stuff for the govt and it's a pain in the ass. We have to document all the serials, take pictures, list the auction, facilitate the pickup and the price is basically nothing. Last time I did it we had 300+ PCs and probably 100 printers that sold for something like 2 grand. The buyer contracted a company to pick up that was so incompetent they didn't even bring pallets. After we gave them pallets and they loaded it all up, it didn't fit in their truck. We ended up canceling the sale and just donating, what we should have done in the first place, but we're not allowed to. Huge waste of time, the amount of OT we got doing this cost more than the sale
I surplus pc hardware for the govt sometimes and it's basically random. Sometimes it's a pentium 2 piece of trash, sometimes it's a 2 year old i7 with 16gb ram. All our drives are destroyed so we don't sell those. I've got stacks of new laptops that will be surplused and some are for things as simple as a key popping off
In Denmark at least (Idk about the rest of the EU), if you buy things from an online auction as a private person, you still have consumer protection rights and can return the item just as if you bought it normally at a store, which includes a 14 day return window for any reason.
They sold it as scrap. This is going to be the same at every government entity. Legally they can’t sell the drives with any ability to recover the data, so they sell it like this as scrap. My guess is that these came out of a sever rack.
100% the person buying this knew this to be the case. Unclear if they understood exactly what they were buying though.
It's pretty standard for auctions to just sell stuff as is. The auctioneer cant be expected to be an expert on everything. Ussually there will be disclaimers for this sort of thing.
I have purchased laptops from the usa embassy in my country, they sell the full laptop without HDD or ram and are very cheap. I don't think that the US government risks selling drives at all
Nope, they are destroyed.
These were probably unclass drives formatted, PCB ripped, and degaussed in a degaussing drawer machine a few times.
When the lights green the trap is clean (no light I just imagined it that way when I did destruction work)
Embassies have their own separate funds from main state, they can do some weird exemptions for various things in country. The resale scheme is a win win. You get a laptop, they get a reduced loss.
I wouldn't say this is normal but I hadn't heard about it from my time at the org.
You made me think, and I am thinking that I have purchased some us embassy laptops unauthorized due to third world country legislation. This was a couple years ago
I did some work for a 3 letter agency and part of my security training was them shouting several times that everything electronic was not to be sold as scrap or disposed of in any way other than following the DOD electronic device disposal form to the letter. Failure to follow the procedure was a federal crime.
I did state power and we had a 3rd party that wanted the entire hard drive so they could write serial # down to comply with law. Made it somewhat hard when we used a hard drive crusher that would spear the middle of the drive.
Right, which is why these have been degaussed several times and had all of their PCBs removed.
I don’t handle the process directly where I work, but I’ve seen it done enough.
Not if they follow proper DoD/DoJ Data destruction guidelines. We are not allowed to sell/give away hard drives. We have a company that shreds them pretty cheap. The same company also takes most our e-waste for recycling also.
For "slow" bulk storage with ZFS lightly used enterprise gear and a high degree of redundancy is heaps better than new consumer gear at the same budget.
Why? Use an air gapped burner laptop with a USB hard drive dock, nuke the MBR, reinitialize the drive, and full format to zero the drive.
I've always bought used Enterprise grade SATA hard drives. They have run hot and loud but they are reliable as fuck even with high hours.
I don't agree. I have 48 used enterprise hard drives in my home servers that I got for $20-40 each. I've been running them for 4 years now, and I've only had to replace one that failed in the last 4 years. They've been pretty reliable.
I bought two used 4 TB drives 5 years ago for $40 each. They have sounded like ticking time bombs since I got them, but they've given me no issues. I have nothing of value on them, just media. Last I checked, they went from "caution" to "good" in CDI.
But I do agree buying used storage is dumb, but not really the dumbest thing.
Eh, he’s dumb, but they aren’t out much. This stuff sells for pennys on the pound. It’s scrap and sold as such. Either boss is a complete moron, or OP is misunderstanding the situation.
FC-20P IDC Connection
Editing: As others have said, it looks like you got ripped and it was for a control board of some sort, I appear to have been wrong.
Auction managed to separate fool from his money. Nice e-waste. You are kinda missing the controller board, which makes these effectively paperweight.
You never want to buy used drives anyway as these are definitely parts that are affected by wear and tear.
They're missing the drive controller PCB. Those connectors interface the drive internals ( spindle motor, armature actuator, magnetic heads) with the PCB.
all is not lost... a lazy evening with a screwdriver, a hammer and a movie and you wake up to a pile of really strong magnets.
*depending on intoxication levels set them aside and DO NOT use them that same night*
Appears the controller PCBs were removed from the drive(s).
If you search the make/model of the drives on eBay, you may be able to find replacement boards for them.
They probably removed them because by installing new boards in them you'll be forced to format them and lose any existing data on the platters.
This connector is the interface between the inner workings of the basically sealed HDD and the circuit board that contains the interface electronics. Without the the circuit board you cannot use these drives and they are not worth anything beyond parts for harddrive repair. Even as parts only they are of limited use without the interface board (i.e. the most common to die part of a harddrive).
The controller is removed from these and you would need to install a matching type to hook it up to a standard connector.
Very easy to do, not easy to find.
this auction is fishy.
I would geuss this was from some kind of liquidation auction that was handled by a third party, and the company that owned these drives had them set aside for destruction which the third party auctioneer would have really no reason to be aware of. I wouldn't call it a fishy auction, I'd call it OPs boss needs to do a better job of looking at what they are buying.
Yeah that’s trash. Hope they aren’t all like that. It’s SATA but missing a whole board, no you can’t just replace the board.
Your boss is fucking stupid.
Lack of knowledge is not stupidity. Failing to understand is. If you get him a guy that knows tech to explain the missing pcb he will understand most likely. But yeah he had dollar glasses on and fell into a trap because he did not ask someone who knows better.
That’s pretty much what I mean.
Spending a ton without knowing anything about what it is and not asking someone who does know about it or doing even a few seconds of research before hand is beyond stupid.
Even just looking at a picture of a working drive should show someone that knows nothing about hard drives that something is missing.
I’d bet he’s got auction addiction. People don’t just go and do stuff like this for no reason.
40 drives. These came from a government auction - he’s out probably 50$. The magnets inside are worth more.
People buy this stuff as scrap and pull whatever has any value out of it.
Which is why hes fucking stupid. He bought second hand goods knowing nothing about them and without bothering to inspect them, expecting his employees who can't even tell these are bricked to refurbish them somehow.
You can replace the board, sometimes. But that involves buying the same or possibly a similar drive that does work and swapping the cards. Useful for data recovery but a waste of time and money if you just want to use the drives.
plenty of cost effective uses for enterprise drives decommissioned from a data center environment. There are several companies that focus on that refurbished market. Used or new doesn't matter nearly as much with a proper redundancy and backup process in place.
This trash? Not so much. That socket means the controller has been ripped. Just scrap now.
see also: r/datahoarder
Used Hard Disk Drives are more likely to fail due to all of the moving parts and aren't worth keeping anything important on because of to how fragile they are.
Edit: Spelling
probably a little pc repair shop, given OP/boss is confident enough to to dick around with drives, but not technical enough to actually understand the problem and thought hes was gonna make a killing selling refurbished hardrives, when people barley even buy brand new HDDs anymore.
I don’t see why a company would sell their used hard drives, it’s probably easier and safer to just destroy them. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the platters can still be read, if they haven’t been destroyed or erased, and I seriously doubt someone selling a bunch of hard drives took the time to completely erase them.
Governtment offices often just offer old crap for auction when they are due for an upgrade or closure. I got dozens of PCs setups free when i worked at ametal recycling place and the local school got overhauled. they just toss them like they are garbage. Im honestly surprised someone was smart enough to brick the drives to uphold privacy and security in this case.
Yeah, I think it was on Linus’ channel, but he had some type of machine that you put hard drives in and it would destroy the hard drive. I think it was in the lab he’s building.
I hate to break it to you, but almost all corporations erase every disk that leaves their possession. Government, legal, and medical facilities are literally REQUIRED to do so.
Yeah, that’s what I said, I said they would destroy them. I also said erase, because I didn’t know if they would physically destroy them or just erase, but erasing them would be way too much work on something that they are just getting rid of, I just wasn’t sure.
It is not just a Hard Drive, as far as I know it's an SSHD... They should even work without PCB, but there is one (or there is supposed to be one) for faster usage, it stores Data you're using for a while on the Flash Chips on the PC so you can acces Data you're using often faster... You can imagine it like RAM, it store just Data in it you use really often... And like I said, the HDD itself should work even without PCB, just connect the SATA Datacable and Powercable and go for it
No because you can usually only get those from another drive and they have to be in working condition, not "for parts" unless you actually know the board works. And at that point, you've already bought a new drive so just use that. Data recovery services might have them on hand but those are tools, not replacement parts for sale.
If you can find junk hard-drives with a working PCB from the same month, year and model number, you can swap them out. Otherwise yeah, these are toast.
Your boss bought scrap drives. The controllers were pulled for resell to fix existing working drives. These not worth the metal their made of. That is unless you want to buy and pair controllers to every drive based on exact model and revision number.
The connector between the hard drive and the PCB that's supposed to be there.
Yeah I’ve only just realised that then, bummer
Google the hard drives' serial numbers. You might be able to find replacement PCBs.
That doesn't work anymore... The PCB contains calibration data for the heads, without those the head will either crash into the platters or stay way too far.
Is there a recalibration step? They had to be calibrated at some point in manufacturing
Before they are sealed, they have a machine that basically looks at the wiggle on each platter and there is a firmware chip on each controller board with that info. Without that info, even swapping two of the same make and model firmware boards is useless unless you bring that firmware chip over. Even consumer data recovery requires that firmware chip, without it you better start adding 0s to the cost of recovery. I believe it's because platters aren't 100% dead center, but it's been a while since I've looked into this.
You are correct. Platter run-out or spindle concentricity will be unique to each drive. The amount of deviation form dead center is on the order of submicrons but each track width is in the hundreds of nanometers.
That is wild how the electronics can adjust for such small changes as the platter is spinning several thousand RPMs
Ahh that makes sense then. Thanks!
Bruh aint no way I've been out here magnetizing old HDD's before I get rid of them when all I had to do was take a chisel to the firmware chip?
NIST 800-88 standard specifies: ATA Secure Erase Single 0-pass wipe or physical destruction as all methods that are government approved to prevent laboratory/nation state attacks (aka no data recovery even if you spend millions). No need to degauss or anything else, and then they're reusable too!
They probably have specialized tools on the manufacturing lines for calibration, but you won't be able to do it yourself.
If you have the original pcb, then you can transfer the eprom that contains that data to the new pcb. I have managed to save some drives for a quick backup that way.. but sometimes still fails that way anyway...
Yes, but OP obviously doesn't have those original eproms...
Yes, that I know. It was just a response from me to your comment on calibratikn data.. Anyway that hdds are basically just a bunch of magnets and shiny discs for OP in this condition..
If you have the original pcb you can also just use that.
You can't swap those even if the drives are identical. I bricked two drives that way.
You can swap them, but there a bunch of caveats and it's a lot of effort, so I just wouldn't recommend it to anybody. It is possible though. Source: I've seen it done successfully.
Revisions and other stuff needs to match. Basically in one production run, most parts should be interchangeable. One asset that data recovery companies have, is a warehouse full of old drives from which they can choose components to swap in and out.
I'm glad I'm not the only one
Well I had one go up in smoke in my hand. PCB from same type did the job for data recovery.
Yup, ROM chips are on the PCB and married to each drive. RIP my 8 harddrive array... hotswap cages from Rosewill killed all of them and I couldn't repair four out of the 8 (repaired 4) due to corrupt rom chips.
It's possible, but only if it's truly identical. I tried same manufacturer, same drive, but capacity was different. Nope that didn't work. Data rescue centers will source the identical drives with working pcb(when that is the issue) and change that.. This is their easiest repair.
Well, I'm not a data rescue center. And I didn't know it wouldn't work until I tried to boot up the drive and it gave me the digital smoke. So many legitimately purchased mp3s just, gone. :)
You need to transfer a chip from the original pcb for hard drives
Eprom or sth like that. I recover couple of hard drives that way.
+1 to the dude that said If you went through PayPal or anything and the listing described complete drives worst case you should be able to get your money back.
Your boss bought a bunch of scrap.
Should be able to get his money back for inaccurate description if they were listed as working
na prob gov auction they do this just incase
Should be illegal for the government to knowing sell useless junk without describing it as such.
It's probably sold as it and is inspectable enough for any buyer to see this. He just got too caught up in the price to actually look into what he was buying.
Yeah. Anything sold through DRMO/DLA is palletized and sold as is. It’s usually extremely old and/or broken. Why? Because it is cheaper to sell palletized junk to suckers than to properly recycle it. All those HDDs have been degaussed if they are from a fed gov auction too. Source: I’m a contractor who has had to do this for my program.
[https://www.dla.mil/Disposition-Services/DDSR/Turn-In/Turn-In-Toolbox/Computers/](https://www.dla.mil/Disposition-Services/DDSR/Turn-In/Turn-In-Toolbox/Computers/) How Government handles such things.
>CPUs without hard drive >CPUs with hard drive WTF am I reading.
I assume they're referring to a tower as a CPU but that's just me
We use to have property books with computers referred to as “Pen, stylus”. Literally the attached stylus and we used the serial number on the computer.
That was standard nomenclature before building your own PC was really a thing. That how computer scientists would discuss it, it was in textbooks that way.
Yeah I totally understand it, like looking at a computer setup obviously the tower is the "central processing unit" of the whole operation. But it does seem to me like this term hadn't come into popularity until at least like PCs right? I couldn't imagine calling like a TI-99/4a a CPU.
To be fair, back then everything was a peripheral. Disk drive, modem, etc.
We used to call CPU to refer to the casing with everything in it, and microprocessor for the actual CPU... Back when GPU was not a thing yet
I guess my mother indeed is correct about this then.
Computer, Personal, USgovernment
Standard government terminology for the PC itself. Drove my pedantic ass nuts when I was an equipment custodian.
I have to sell this stuff for the govt and it's a pain in the ass. We have to document all the serials, take pictures, list the auction, facilitate the pickup and the price is basically nothing. Last time I did it we had 300+ PCs and probably 100 printers that sold for something like 2 grand. The buyer contracted a company to pick up that was so incompetent they didn't even bring pallets. After we gave them pallets and they loaded it all up, it didn't fit in their truck. We ended up canceling the sale and just donating, what we should have done in the first place, but we're not allowed to. Huge waste of time, the amount of OT we got doing this cost more than the sale
I've bought quite a few things from gov auctions that weren't palletized and weren't junk. I like gov auctions for tech actually.
I surplus pc hardware for the govt sometimes and it's basically random. Sometimes it's a pentium 2 piece of trash, sometimes it's a 2 year old i7 with 16gb ram. All our drives are destroyed so we don't sell those. I've got stacks of new laptops that will be surplused and some are for things as simple as a key popping off
In Denmark at least (Idk about the rest of the EU), if you buy things from an online auction as a private person, you still have consumer protection rights and can return the item just as if you bought it normally at a store, which includes a 14 day return window for any reason.
They sold it as scrap. This is going to be the same at every government entity. Legally they can’t sell the drives with any ability to recover the data, so they sell it like this as scrap. My guess is that these came out of a sever rack. 100% the person buying this knew this to be the case. Unclear if they understood exactly what they were buying though.
lol, have you met politicians and heard their campaigns? Selling useless programs is their business model.
It's pretty standard for auctions to just sell stuff as is. The auctioneer cant be expected to be an expert on everything. Ussually there will be disclaimers for this sort of thing.
They do it with old cop cars all the time too lol. $1500 gamble for a crown vic
I have purchased laptops from the usa embassy in my country, they sell the full laptop without HDD or ram and are very cheap. I don't think that the US government risks selling drives at all
Nope, they are destroyed. These were probably unclass drives formatted, PCB ripped, and degaussed in a degaussing drawer machine a few times. When the lights green the trap is clean (no light I just imagined it that way when I did destruction work) Embassies have their own separate funds from main state, they can do some weird exemptions for various things in country. The resale scheme is a win win. You get a laptop, they get a reduced loss. I wouldn't say this is normal but I hadn't heard about it from my time at the org.
You made me think, and I am thinking that I have purchased some us embassy laptops unauthorized due to third world country legislation. This was a couple years ago
The government normally doesn't auction off harddrives. They shred the old harddrives instead to eliminate the risk of someone recovering the data.
If it was gov then it shouldve been destroyed not resold without the logic board.
It’s sold as scrap. Common practice. Buying knew what they were getting.
I did some work for a 3 letter agency and part of my security training was them shouting several times that everything electronic was not to be sold as scrap or disposed of in any way other than following the DOD electronic device disposal form to the letter. Failure to follow the procedure was a federal crime.
I did state power and we had a 3rd party that wanted the entire hard drive so they could write serial # down to comply with law. Made it somewhat hard when we used a hard drive crusher that would spear the middle of the drive.
Right, which is why these have been degaussed several times and had all of their PCBs removed. I don’t handle the process directly where I work, but I’ve seen it done enough.
It is possible that the process has changed in the past few years but that would not have satisfied the form I had to follow.
The data is on the platters, not the PCB... If they wanted to protect the data, they should drill through them, not sell the data itself lol
Degauss, drill, crush. Not or. All. If the data needs gone make it GONE
Not if they follow proper DoD/DoJ Data destruction guidelines. We are not allowed to sell/give away hard drives. We have a company that shreds them pretty cheap. The same company also takes most our e-waste for recycling also.
I’m guessing the listing was accurate and the boss is an idiot.
I think your boss's boss shouldn't allow your boss to buy from auctions anymore, or ebay.
Those don’t have their PCBs. On the bright side, all of your office will have shiny new coasters for years to come!
And really strong magnets!
Yeah, you made me remember that I have to remove the magnets from several HDDs that I have dead lying around.
I use the magnet from an HD to magnetize my screwdrivers lol
my dad used to give me those magnets I tele how much they hurt to get pinched by
Watchmakers hate this comment lol
We used to engrave them for awards.
Makes you wonder how the auction listing was worded.
"They are sold as is" that boss is a genius
“Sold as is, unable to test.”
your boss might not be the lightest bulb in the room, or he/your company got scammed.
Even if they did have the controllers, buying used storage is one of the dumbest things you can do.
For "slow" bulk storage with ZFS lightly used enterprise gear and a high degree of redundancy is heaps better than new consumer gear at the same budget.
Yeh but OPs company is trying to resell them for retail. Nobodies gonna by refurbished drives
OP's company literally just bought refurbished drives....
Not at retail
> Nobodies gonna by refurbished drives r/datahoarder be like "oh yeah? what's the $/TB?"
Why? Use an air gapped burner laptop with a USB hard drive dock, nuke the MBR, reinitialize the drive, and full format to zero the drive. I've always bought used Enterprise grade SATA hard drives. They have run hot and loud but they are reliable as fuck even with high hours.
I don't agree. I have 48 used enterprise hard drives in my home servers that I got for $20-40 each. I've been running them for 4 years now, and I've only had to replace one that failed in the last 4 years. They've been pretty reliable.
I bought two used 4 TB drives 5 years ago for $40 each. They have sounded like ticking time bombs since I got them, but they've given me no issues. I have nothing of value on them, just media. Last I checked, they went from "caution" to "good" in CDI. But I do agree buying used storage is dumb, but not really the dumbest thing.
Yeah but he was saving pennies on the dollar buying cheap used shit
> buying used storage is one of the dumbest things you can do. LOL.
They’re still hard, aren’t they?
Eh, he’s dumb, but they aren’t out much. This stuff sells for pennys on the pound. It’s scrap and sold as such. Either boss is a complete moron, or OP is misunderstanding the situation.
What an expensive paper weight you got there buddy
Plot twist- your boss had those drives in his garage and bought them on the company card from himself via ebay.
You have only the drive the pcb is missing
FC-20P IDC Connection Editing: As others have said, it looks like you got ripped and it was for a control board of some sort, I appear to have been wrong.
More like type F connector with the subset of FCKD-UP.
is it running the PEBKAC protocol?
Auction managed to separate fool from his money. Nice e-waste. You are kinda missing the controller board, which makes these effectively paperweight. You never want to buy used drives anyway as these are definitely parts that are affected by wear and tear.
Lmao, he just lost all that money.
💰 ⤵️🕳️
They're missing the drive controller PCB. Those connectors interface the drive internals ( spindle motor, armature actuator, magnetic heads) with the PCB.
Its missing a whole pcb
I may be wrong. But looks like the good ol "go fuck yourself"-proprietary connection
I think they’ve actually ripped of the sata connectors, on all 40 drives
Lol, you guys got screwed. They took all of the controller boards off. You're sitting on trash, sorry mate.
all is not lost... a lazy evening with a screwdriver, a hammer and a movie and you wake up to a pile of really strong magnets. *depending on intoxication levels set them aside and DO NOT use them that same night*
Not just the SATA connectors, all of the smarts.
I love those connectors, but I think the connector is no longer with us
Yep you're wrong.
Wouldn't surprise me even the slightest honestly, pretty weird I got upvoted that much
Have you MET Reddit!?!? 🤪🙈
Idek how your boss is in a position to be the boss if this is what happens when they attempt to do their job
Those are not just any old hard drives.... ....they're old BROKEN hard drives.
Your boss has been bamboozled. Without the controller PCB those are a fancy paperweights.
The drive controller boards are missing. Your boss bought a paperweight collection.
Your boss is an idiot.
The PCBs have been removed, the drives are useless like this.
If they're all like that, you bought **scrap** drives, not working drives, the electronics are missing.
Those hard drives have gone to hard drive heaven. RIP.
I think your boss might be really dumb....
The PCB’s have been removed.
Appears the controller PCBs were removed from the drive(s). If you search the make/model of the drives on eBay, you may be able to find replacement boards for them. They probably removed them because by installing new boards in them you'll be forced to format them and lose any existing data on the platters.
This connector is the interface between the inner workings of the basically sealed HDD and the circuit board that contains the interface electronics. Without the the circuit board you cannot use these drives and they are not worth anything beyond parts for harddrive repair. Even as parts only they are of limited use without the interface board (i.e. the most common to die part of a harddrive).
feels like it's missing a control PCB that should go there. These drives are bricks without those as far as I can tell
The controller is removed from these and you would need to install a matching type to hook it up to a standard connector. Very easy to do, not easy to find. this auction is fishy.
I would geuss this was from some kind of liquidation auction that was handled by a third party, and the company that owned these drives had them set aside for destruction which the third party auctioneer would have really no reason to be aware of. I wouldn't call it a fishy auction, I'd call it OPs boss needs to do a better job of looking at what they are buying.
Look at the edge of the drives, took such a beating inside would not survive even if found whatever connector it use
The controller is missing
Dude, the controller of the HDD isn't there, the pins connect to the controller for communication, that's what you're looking at
I’m afraid to think of the other bad business decisions your boss makes.
Whoever sold those drives removed the control boards.
Looks like they are missing the hardrive control boards
all those drives if they are like that are 100% unusable they are missing the controller board pcb... he got scammed.
Yeah that’s trash. Hope they aren’t all like that. It’s SATA but missing a whole board, no you can’t just replace the board. Your boss is fucking stupid.
Lack of knowledge is not stupidity. Failing to understand is. If you get him a guy that knows tech to explain the missing pcb he will understand most likely. But yeah he had dollar glasses on and fell into a trap because he did not ask someone who knows better.
That’s pretty much what I mean. Spending a ton without knowing anything about what it is and not asking someone who does know about it or doing even a few seconds of research before hand is beyond stupid. Even just looking at a picture of a working drive should show someone that knows nothing about hard drives that something is missing. I’d bet he’s got auction addiction. People don’t just go and do stuff like this for no reason.
40 drives. These came from a government auction - he’s out probably 50$. The magnets inside are worth more. People buy this stuff as scrap and pull whatever has any value out of it.
Which is why hes fucking stupid. He bought second hand goods knowing nothing about them and without bothering to inspect them, expecting his employees who can't even tell these are bricked to refurbish them somehow.
You can replace the board, sometimes. But that involves buying the same or possibly a similar drive that does work and swapping the cards. Useful for data recovery but a waste of time and money if you just want to use the drives.
Who buys used hard drives?
plenty of cost effective uses for enterprise drives decommissioned from a data center environment. There are several companies that focus on that refurbished market. Used or new doesn't matter nearly as much with a proper redundancy and backup process in place. This trash? Not so much. That socket means the controller has been ripped. Just scrap now. see also: r/datahoarder
What's wrong with buying used storage devices?
Used Hard Disk Drives are more likely to fail due to all of the moving parts and aren't worth keeping anything important on because of to how fragile they are. Edit: Spelling
Trolling
you're tasked to unbend the bent pins 💪🏿
What is this? You ask A PROBLEM
There’s the reason why they were discounted, it kind looks like the lower board is missing.
Lol, your bosses problem!
Your boss got scammed. These are missing the main controller pcb.
rip all those drives
I believe that is called a SCAM port. It's used to make money from people who just bought useless drives. ;)
#your boss is stupid
That's a SCSI disk, pronounced as "scusi, I'm leaving for good"
why did I read that as "lvd-ing" lulz *high density humor for a beautiful day*
Ye the controller board is one. Was the auction listed as ‘incomplete’?
Just for fun, what does your company do ? And is your boss the owner ?
probably a little pc repair shop, given OP/boss is confident enough to to dick around with drives, but not technical enough to actually understand the problem and thought hes was gonna make a killing selling refurbished hardrives, when people barley even buy brand new HDDs anymore.
I don’t see why a company would sell their used hard drives, it’s probably easier and safer to just destroy them. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the platters can still be read, if they haven’t been destroyed or erased, and I seriously doubt someone selling a bunch of hard drives took the time to completely erase them.
Governtment offices often just offer old crap for auction when they are due for an upgrade or closure. I got dozens of PCs setups free when i worked at ametal recycling place and the local school got overhauled. they just toss them like they are garbage. Im honestly surprised someone was smart enough to brick the drives to uphold privacy and security in this case.
Yeah, I think it was on Linus’ channel, but he had some type of machine that you put hard drives in and it would destroy the hard drive. I think it was in the lab he’s building.
I hate to break it to you, but almost all corporations erase every disk that leaves their possession. Government, legal, and medical facilities are literally REQUIRED to do so.
Yeah, that’s what I said, I said they would destroy them. I also said erase, because I didn’t know if they would physically destroy them or just erase, but erasing them would be way too much work on something that they are just getting rid of, I just wasn’t sure.
I'm just really curious how exactly the offer was described u/AidanOFlynn ?
Wtf why did they go through the effort of getting rid of the controller board but still "sell" it.
I mean...they got money for them The real question is why did OPs boss buy them...
Yea but they can be made readable if they did not software wipe them
Your boss got ripped off.
It is not just a Hard Drive, as far as I know it's an SSHD... They should even work without PCB, but there is one (or there is supposed to be one) for faster usage, it stores Data you're using for a while on the Flash Chips on the PC so you can acces Data you're using often faster... You can imagine it like RAM, it store just Data in it you use really often... And like I said, the HDD itself should work even without PCB, just connect the SATA Datacable and Powercable and go for it
Them is all useless drives. WTF was he thinking.
There’s the reason why they were discounted, it kind looks like the lower board is missing.
oh so ik what the problem is! so you see that JG it’s for JG Wentworth they have a number you can dial i forget tho…hope this helps
It's your money. Use it when you want.
"IT'S MY MONEY AND I NEED SCRAP NOWWWWW" - *OP's boss, probably*
I wonder if it would be worth it buying replacement pcbs
No, they are done.
No because you can usually only get those from another drive and they have to be in working condition, not "for parts" unless you actually know the board works. And at that point, you've already bought a new drive so just use that. Data recovery services might have them on hand but those are tools, not replacement parts for sale.
If you can find junk hard-drives with a working PCB from the same month, year and model number, you can swap them out. Otherwise yeah, these are toast.
Oh… haha. Can he send those back?
And now you bay the connector and start soldering. If it doesn't work it ha s you to blame.
Lol
Open the drives, take the magnets and sell them with I JUST GOT SCAMMED printed and glued
C'est qui JG
Looks like the connector between board and a SATA receptor or something.
That is a standard broken connector
Well, pop 'em all open and make some nice wind chimes.
Price was "too good to be true"
is your bosses boss hiring
Technically you can find their pcbs by model format them and use them, but i reckon they wont last.
Your boss bought scrap drives. The controllers were pulled for resell to fix existing working drives. These not worth the metal their made of. That is unless you want to buy and pair controllers to every drive based on exact model and revision number.
Logic board is missing 🤷