Storage Buyback

OEMs covered

NetApp · Pure Storage · Dell EMC (Unity, PowerStore, Isilon, Data Domain) · HPE Nimble / 3PAR / Alletra · IBM FlashSystem · Hitachi VSP

Pricing notes

Drives are wiped to NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 Purge before resale; SSD/NVMe drives are firmware-Sanitized to IEEE 2883-2022; arrays inventoried at firmware level. Per-asset certificate retained.

What we see most of in Malaysia

How we process your engagement

Send your asset list. We respond with a written MYR quote in per engagement SLA (5 business days for AI accelerators). Pickup against signed manifest within Pickup scheduled per engagement, nationwide Malaysia. Wipe + functional test included as standard — drives sanitised to NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 Purge for spinning HDDs and IEEE 2883-2022 firmware Sanitize for SSDs/NVMe. Per-asset Certificate of Destruction issued, line-item invoicing per asset, settlement against your PO. Multi-site programme engagements consolidate to a single MYR settlement line; single-event engagements settle within 7 business days of manifest reconciliation.

Condition grading rubric — how we set the offer

Storage arrays grade against the same A/B/C/D rubric as servers, but with array-specific factors. Grade A — refurb-grade: arrays power on, controller heads are paired and online, all drives detect, all FC/iSCSI/NVMe-oF ports link, no firmware-licence-locked state, and the configuration has been factory-reset. Typical recovery: 28–48% of original list. Grade B — working with minor defects: one failed drive, one failed controller fan, minor cosmetic damage, or firmware version requiring upgrade. Typical recovery: 15–28%. Grade C — parts-harvest: controller-pair failure, backplane damage, multiple drive failures. Drives recovered separately at per-drive pricing; chassis recovered at material-recovery economics. Typical recovery: 6–12%. Grade D — scrap recovery only: water damage, fire damage, OEM-locked state with no recoverable path. Typical recovery: 2–4%. SSD-heavy arrays (Pure FlashArray, Dell PowerStore) clear higher than spinning-disk arrays of the same vintage because the SSDs hold residual value independent of the chassis.

Typical recovery ranges — current secondary market

Sanitisation specifics — what the certificate cites

Storage-array sanitisation operates at three layers. Drive layer: every drive — SAS, SATA, NVMe, NL-SAS — is removed from the chassis at receipt and queued through the Sanitize pipeline. SED drives (self-encrypting) clear via Cryptographic Erase in seconds, meeting NIST 800-88 Purge classification. Non-SED SSDs clear via IEEE 2883-2022 firmware Sanitize Block Erase. Spinning HDDs clear via NIST 800-88 Purge ATA Secure Erase. Controller-cache layer: NetApp WAFL metadata, Pure deduplication metadata, Dell PowerStore inline-dedup state, and HPE Nimble snapshot metadata are explicitly cleared via controller-side factory reset; clearing method documented on the certificate. Backplane and HBA layer: where the array uses dedicated NVMe-oF backplanes or persistent-memory write caches, those are explicitly cleared via the controller's factory-reset routine. Configuration layer: array name, IP addresses, encryption-key handles, federation membership, and remote-replication relationships are all cleared. The certificate documents each clearing step. For arrays where the customer requires drive destruction rather than reuse — common in top-classified BFSI and government engagements — we destroy at 0.5mm or 2mm particle size depending on data classification, with witness destruction available on request.

Recent engagement scenarios (anonymised)

Scenario 1 — Multi-array consolidation, 12 NetApp AFF. A regional bank consolidating from 12 NetApp AFF A300/A400 arrays to a single Pure flash deployment retired the 12 AFF arrays in a single engagement window. 384 SSDs across the 12 arrays sanitised to IEEE 2883-2022 firmware Sanitize. WAFL metadata explicitly cleared; controllers factory-reset and tested. Reuse-First reuse rate: 78% (chassis and 9 of 12 controller pairs cleared Grade A and routed to refurb channel). Settlement in MYR against PO; line-item certificate covering each array and each drive. Customer's sustainability committee received the embodied-carbon-recovered metric (estimated tonnage avoided from landfill).

Scenario 2 — End-of-support Dell EMC Isilon retirement. A media company retiring a 6PB Dell EMC Isilon Gen 6 cluster post end-of-support needed regulator-acceptable destruction certificates for the proprietary content. Drives sanitised to NIST 800-88 Purge, then physically destroyed at 2mm particle size at customer request (engagement-specific protocol overriding Reuse-First). Per-drive certificate retained; chassis recovered at material-recovery economics. Customer avoided the cost of continuing an end-of-support contract for compliance reasons.

Scenario 3 — Pure FlashArray refresh, 6 arrays. A capital-markets trading firm refreshing 6 Pure FlashArray //X90 arrays under MAS TRM equivalents required tamper-evident chain of custody on the replaced units due to the trade-history data resident on them. Tamper-evident sealed containers staged at the customer cage; manifest signed at every transfer; sanitisation under customer-witness via remote video feed; per-drive certificate. Reuse-First reuse rate: 84% (most drives Grade A; arrays cleared Grade A after factory reset). Settlement in MYR; trade-history compliance attestation cross-referenced to the customer's regulator-facing report.

Pickup, chain of custody, and logistics

Storage pickups carry array-specific risks that the manifest reflects. Controllers are paired; an array cannot be split across pickups without breaking the high-availability state, so pickups are scheduled to remove paired controllers in a single window. Drives remain in-chassis at pickup unless your engagement requires on-site sanitisation. Cabling reclaim is included where the customer wants the cabling out; where the customer is keeping the cabling for the replacement deployment, we leave it staged. SAN/NAS fabric switches can be picked up under the same engagement (quoted as networking buyback) — typical for storage refresh engagements that retire the entire SAN fabric simultaneously. Multi-site engagements consolidate to a single MYR settlement line; the manifest shows per-array pickup but the invoice is single-line. For arrays with active replication relationships (NetApp SnapMirror, Pure ActiveCluster, Dell PowerStore Metro), we explicitly verify the replication has been broken and the array is in standalone state before pickup, to prevent any cross-replication data leakage during transit.

Common pitfalls that erode recovery

Pitfall 1 — Drive serials not in customer asset list. Storage arrays often have hot-swap replacement drives that were never added to the asset register. We re-scan at receipt and reconcile any discrepancy. Pitfall 2 — Encryption key not exported. Where the array used customer-managed encryption keys (NetApp NSE, Pure encryption), the keys are typically held in a separate KMIP server. The customer must export and retain those keys before pickup; once cleared on the array, the data is unrecoverable. We flag this at scoping. Pitfall 3 — Replication not broken. Active replication to a DR site means data is still flowing during pickup. We verify replication is broken and the array is in standalone state before pickup; this is a scoping checklist item. Pitfall 4 — End-of-support lock state. Some arrays enter a locked state after end-of-support that prevents factory reset without OEM intervention. We work with the OEM where the customer has the contractual right to do so, or document the locked state on the certificate. Pitfall 5 — Federation/cluster membership not cleared. Dell PowerStore cluster membership and NetApp federation membership must be explicitly cleared before the array can be redeployed; we handle this in the factory-reset routine.

Why customers in Malaysia choose Maxicom for storage buyback

Continuous operation since 1996 — the Maxicom group was founded in India in 1996 and operates across Malaysia, plus four other Maxicom regions. Per-asset certificate format admissible against , PDPA Malaysia, NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1, IEEE 2883-2022, and equivalent regulators in every jurisdiction we have served. Reuse-First reuse rate of 65–75% blended across our 2024–2025 cohort — typically 1.5–3× the residual value of destruction-first OEM trade-in programmes. Settlement in MYR against your purchase order, line-item per asset, payment terms 7 business days from manifest reconciliation. Cross-border resale routing under NDA preserves channel-respect — your retired gear never re-appears in your local market unless you specifically authorise local resale. Programme-level pricing for multi-event commitments; quarterly business reviews for ongoing engagements. Single SOW, single ledger, single regulator-facing report — your fixed-asset team reconciles to one document.