Comment by NikolaNovak

Partially its because the details are somewhat opaque. I do buy new drives from reputable brands, but can find it hard to know what I gain and what I lose at different price points within those manufacturers. It's hard to even find out which drives are dram less, never mind what other features they have that impact reliability. From the days of ibm deskstars I've also learned that drive model reliability is likely only understood by the time its off the market.

(I agree in principle that used or off brand drives seem insane to me, but at the same time, I do live on laptops I buy used so their drives are actually used as well :/)