[JeffAtlanta]

There is a theory that the reason why a premium is paid for hard drives on ebay is that many people fail to wipe their hard drives before selling them. As a result, unscrupulous buyers on ebay are able to lift credit card info off of the unwiped drives.

You can sell unopened hard drives on ebay for more than what a person can get shipped to them free at Fry's. In fact, every time Fry's has a big sale, ebay is flooded with hard drives the next week.

Fry's uses hard drives as loss leaders and at times sells them for less than cost.

Cell phones are marketed the same way.

[vbmoneyspender]

Buyers Scour eBay For Data-Rich Hard Drives

"I think that many drives sell for more than their market value," on eBay, Garfinkel said in an e-mail interview with TechWeb. The only explanation: they're playing the possibilities, and expect there's data on some of the drives they buy.