Buying a recertified drive is like buying used soiled underpants that have been dry cleaned - you know that they have been washed and should be clean like new but you never feel 100% comfortable using them

Bought a backup for my main drive. But then realised I needed a backup for the backup. Of course, I then needed a backup for the backup's backup. To be safe, I wanted a backup for the backup of the backup's backup. Long story short...I've sold my house and am living in an igloo constructed of hard drives.

Where, may I ask?

That's made my mind up. Not buying. :neutral_face:

Had a Buffalo recertified NAS for over 5 years from a deal on HUKD. Never had a problem with it, Been running 24/7.

not a bad price, but dispatch time is slower than walking to forest gump! told it would be 4 days, already been a week and it still hasn't even left the factory!

"memories are priceless and not easily replicated" hence you NEVER store data in just one location. I have had more hastle with brand new HDD's than recertifieds in my lifetime. So long as you back up your important shizzle, life is good!

I've have a recertified 4TB My Cloud for nearly two years, never missed a beat and came like it had never been used.

Never ending supply of these it seems.....

To clarify, re-certification is the process of running the 'internal' tests [Internal to WD or whoever] on the drive again.
If the drive passes the tests the drive 'should' be OK.
The problem is that you do not know how much 'Wear & Tear' the drive has been through before the re-certification.
It is also possible that the SMART stats have been 'zeroed' before the re-certification.
Statistically, the drive should be OK but there will always be a few drives that fail, just like a few new drives fail also.
Personally, I would not use a re-certified drive for anything that I could not afford to lose or make sure that it is part of a multi-copy backup set.

i.e. If you backup your data to the drive make sure there is at least 'ONE' other copy on another drive.

BTW: Multi-copy backups are the way you should go, anyway, to ensure the chances of getting your data back when you want it are as high as possible.

They go kaput in 6 months, experience from a 2tb nas

​Recertified technical term for reconditioned . had they said that I suspect it wouldn't be hot. Also limited warranty 3/6 mths which doesn't inspire confidence. Memories are priceless and not easily replicated. Do you really want to risk data loss for sake of saving a few quid.

​N+1 problem there I see.

To be honest I've used Crashplan for 5 years, it's been superb. Used to back up locally, was a faff!

Best wait on the next 20% off code to arrive

Bought 2 3tb desktops(from £45 deal two weeks a ago), took a week to arrive, both brand new according to uptime on drive stats. Copy speeds on USB3 via ssd is 125meg a sec. Wow beats both my old buffalo nas's 25meg a sec. Copied all data from both NAS onto both of them, happy days! Took overnight but a happy chappy!

Ha ha, nice one.

hmm need a hdd for my xbox but not sure if it's worth waiting for a better deal

I fitted a WD re-certified drive to my son's gaming PC (it has a SSD as the primary) and it is still working just fine after about a year. The drive turned out to new new old stock.

I purchased two recertified 3tb WD My books back in June for £55 each and both I have not had an issue (as of yet with either) my only complaint with them is that they never go to sleep, I have them connected up to a raspberry pi and for whatever reason they never enter sleep mode, I also have two 3tb Toshiba drives connected that have no problem with spinning down. I can force them to spin down but as soon as they spin back up that is it.

Is not about prices two weeks ago.. It's about what you can get now...

Don't forget to run data recovery on it before you use it - never know what you might find! :smiley: A few friends have reported finding other people's files when running their own data recovery...

Only a tenner of for this compared to Retail and 6 month less warranty
RWDBRMP0020DBK-EESN

FYI I placed an order with them and it took over two weeks to arrive. just be aware.

I could be wrong as I've stopped keeping tracking of them, but usually its those drives

I have had a 3tb NAS drive for a backup of my backup drive for my photos from the outlet it is flawless I've cracked it open and checked the HDD's smart data and it had 74 ish hours of uptime (this was on the third day of owning it) so it's either normal for them to just swap out the drive or this one was sent back with no more than an hours running time on it.

For anyone wondering why I would just void the warranty that fast it's because I paid less than £45 for it and figured if the HDD was duff its still an OK price for a pretty well managed NAS driveless enclosure.

So I missed a 2tb portable for £35? - I've now demoted this deal further to 'Luke Warm' ........ (& no offence to the great LW intended)

Every time these deals come up I get tempted- I say Hot...but I can never commit to getting one. Maybe for a backup of my backup...

Cold from me, paid £90 for a 5tb WD external brand new.

There are two things in life you don't buy 2nd hand, condoms and hard drives.

Buying a recertified drive is like buying used soiled underpants that have been dry cleaned - you know that they have been washed and should be clean like new but you never feel 100% comfortable using them

The mybooks which these are usually retail for more than the portable drives (the ones that were £35). But either way 2tb for £44 isn't bad for non critical data, just isn't as good as £35 :stuck_out_tongue:

I've had recertified drives in the past and had no issues.

That said, everything should be fully backed up regardless. :smiley:

These prices are nothing special, considering they were all an additional 20% off about 2 weeks ago.

Don't forget if you have an academic email address or student card you can get these drives brand new for only a fraction more (there's no point paying for recertified drives if you can get brand new ones for so little extra) , see here:

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/western-digital-20-60-off-for-university-college-academy-school-e-mail-holders-isic-2377543

Which @£43 renders this deal nothing special? Thus why is it 'Hot'?

(& dammit, I missed the £35 deal...grrr)

I got the 2tb one of these last week. It was from the last deal which was £35. It's fine. All hooked upto the Xbone and it is fine. Nothing wrong with it.

Has anyone got any experience with recertified drives they wouldn't mind sharing?

Got the 3tb one the other day for £43 its ok working fine .

Has anyone used one of these for their Xbox? tempted to get a 2tb as I'm using my space up. :smile:

I've got a couple of RDs and they're doing fine. Still going strong. The two Toshiba's I bought brand new both broke down after 13 months though.

I don't see why these couldn't be used for backups.
Good find OP