Tried to load my free Epic games onto a $15 pawn shop drive and things went weird
So I grabbed a 1TB external drive at a pawn shop in Toledo for $15 last month, thinking I'd finally move my free Epic games off my laptop's full SSD. I moved about 8 games over, roughly 200GB total, and only 3 of them would launch after that. The rest gave me errors about missing files, and one just opened a black screen and froze my whole system. Turned out the drive was failing a basic check, so I lost a few save files that were only stored locally. Now I run a quick health test on any used drive right after I buy it, even the cheap ones at garage sales. Anyone got a cheap tool or app they trust for checking used drives without paying for some fancy program?
CrystalDiskInfo is free and it tells you right away if a drive has bad sectors or a bad SMART status. I've seen this same thing with cheap tools and gear at flea markets and estate sales too: the low price is the hook, and it only works out if you test it before you trust it with anything you care about. A $15 drive that eats your save files ends up costing way more than a new one. Run the test first, keep saves backed up somewhere else, and treat any used drive as guilty until it proves itself. Pawn shops usually sell as-is, so the test is the only thing standing between you and a brick.