I personally have had good luck with NOS drives from eBay. Not going to spam the seller here and it’s possible that I’ve just received wiped drives that went through a SMART reset. But they show zero signs of physical wear, even inside the screw holes.
My budget allows for new now so I no longer have to rely on discount NOS. But it’s an option for someone on an extreme budget.
You can throw them in an off-the-shelf NAS, or build your own using something like Unraid or TrueNAS. I use TrueNAS and it works great for me but the learning curve may be steep for some. Both TrueNAS and Unraid work well on old hardware so if you’ve got that old first-gen i3 from 15 years ago, it will be more than enough horsepower to run the NAS.
Same here. I ordered some KN95 masks during the pandemic that came with a fake certification from ICR Polska (ICR Polska is legit; the manufacturer faked the cert). Since it was “sold by Newegg” and not some third-party seller, I thought it was pretty reasonable for me to ask for a refund.
Newegg told me to pound sand.
Then American Express told Newegg to pound sand.
That was the last time I ordered from them.