I’m starting to get back into the swing of tech at large, and found a business laptop that fits my needs for a portable low power emulation device. When I look to buy it secondhand, because I don’t intend to burn money or the environment unnecessarily, I find dozens of extremely cheap listings without drives. Are these secondhand from businesses removing and drilling the drives or is there something else going on?
Even if we were talking about SSDs and not HDDs, would you really want a drive of unknown origin and history? What I hate is when even the ram is missing, which means it’s been removed and sold separately.
I could question each and every part near endlessly, so I never bothered to consider it. Is it common to substitute for a fresh drive? Should I also swap the bios chip while I’m at it?
SSD’s and HDD’s are a wear item with limited lifespans, determined by how heavily used they were in the past.
They’re probably not used too hard in corporate environments, so after a health check, I’d probably keep using what came in it unless reliability was paramount. I have bought a used SSD before for an older laptop, and so far its been reliable.
No the bios chip is a bit much. As for the drive, even though there’s software to check age and wear, you don’t know what it has been through so when buying used it’d be better to stay alert.