Is that refurb actually cheaper?
A used enterprise drive at half price looks obvious until you price in a failure rate two to four times higher and a warranty measured in months. This finds the used price at which the two options cost exactly the same — above that line, the discount is an illusion.
The sticker gap says used is 50% cheaper. After expected failures and warranty coverage the real gap is 42%. That difference is the whole decision, and it is the number nobody calculates before hitting Buy.
With 6 months of warranty against a 5-year horizon, you are self-insuring almost every failure. Budget for spares on the shelf, not RMAs.
Lifetime cost for each option is drives × price, plus the replacements you expect to buy out of pocket. Expected failures are drives × AFR × years; failures falling inside the warranty window cost nothing but shipping and are excluded.
The break-even price is the used price at which used lifetime cost equals new lifetime cost. If the listing is below that line you are genuinely ahead; above it you are paying for the privilege of doing more RMAs.
Not modelled, and worth weighing yourself: downtime, the labour of swapping drives, rebuild risk while a replacement ships, and the fact that used drives arrive with unknown power-on hours. Ask sellers for SMART output — hours, reallocated sectors and pending sectors — before buying, and treat a refusal as an answer.
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