I bougth the hl 5240 around ten years ago and still use the same drum. I buy ink powder every couple of years on eBay to refill it.
It will refuse to print every couple of thousand pages to force you to replace the drum, but that is just a kind of planned obsolecsence in form of an internal timer. I think some sort of thus shit will happen on every printer nowadays. It's only purpose is to create a hole in your pocket and produces a lot of plastic waste.
I found a kind of konami code you can enter for this model to reset the drum counter on the interweb, though, so its not an issue for this model.
So before you buy check if such a code exists for the model you have chosen, before buying one that will waste your yltime and money.
Power off; open front cover; hold go button while powering on until only 3 lights are lit (it should take around 15 sec.); press go 2 times; wait 20-30 seconds then press go five times; close front cover.