I bought two Western Digital WD360GD Raptor drives on eBay. One showed up dead.
I sent it back. The replacement died too.
By October I was done trying drives from the same batch. The seller did not have another Raptor in stock anyway. He said the drives came through a special purchase without the normal labels and that he handled the warranty himself. He also said failures were rare. I had managed to get two of them.
I asked for the simple answer: take back the failed replacement and the other drive, which was still working, and refund the pair.
He agreed.
I would send both drives back together instead of keeping the one that still passed a test and starting this again later.
The Raptors were 10,000 RPM drives. That made them quick for the time and interesting for server work. I was running the network at SimAuthor, operating Praxis on the side, and always looking at hardware I could build with or learn on. Used parts made more of that possible without buying everything new.
Used parts also had to survive a test.
The messages have the model number, the first dead drive, the failed replacement, and the agreed refund. I never named the machine I had in mind. That part is missing.
The last message says the refund would go out that night. I did not keep a later payment record in the same thread. What I kept was enough: two drives bought, two failures, no third attempt. Pack them up and move on.