I hear you. Just scrapped out a number of IDE drives that I had in stock a few weeks ago. It wasn't a huge financial loss but more a loss of time. Time to prep them for re-use then time to break them down for scrap. You just gotta roll with it and take the bad with the good.

I really have to wonder what effect the new solid state drives are going to have on the hard drive market. If the price comes down a little they're likely to replace all of the SATA drives just as the emergence of SATA made IDE obsolete. It will still be a few years before that happens but the handwriting is on the wall.

That's not to say that one shouldn't invest in hard drives if they come available in bulk but there are a few things to consider:

1: Expect that many of the drives won't be suitable for re-sale. (Allocate some time for breakdown.)

2: It would be better to turn n burn on the resale drives. Keep the stock moving because things might look different in a year or two.