There's a couple of theories with refurbished disks

1) They've broken before so they'll break again
2) They've broken before so they've been fixed & checked thoroughly and are potentially more reliable than new ones.

Regardless of the above, they key point with important data is keep several copies - as no disk is immune to failing (new or refurbished). I bought one of these last time around at £23.99 as a backup to a backup and I'm very pleased with it so far.

Another point to make is recertified doesn't necessarily mean they've failed before - it could just be customer returns or old stock.

Reminds me of the definition of insanity as quoted by Albert Einstein - Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results....:confused:

Bought one last time with the code for £23.99 delivered within 5 days. Still a good price at £29.99 though.
Had a couple from WD in the last year 500gb, 750gb and 1tb had no problems with any of them.
Used WD drive checker to test them when they first arrived.

Recertified big NO !
They can fail anytime,so if your data safety important, choose normal ones.

Bought one of these and it failed within a year and the warranty with these is left than half that. Really not worth skimping in the long run.

​I agree to a certain extent but it's an extra risk. Just pay an extra 10 pounds and get one that's at least not had the chance of an actual failure. In IT a file doesn't exist unless there are 3 copies on different drives systems or locations

I had recertified drives. 5 actually. And all 5 failed within 2 years; 1 failed in 7 months, 3 - in 15 months and one lasted 2 years and 4 days. NO MORE!
New hard drives NEVER failed on me and I had loads of them. All were WD drives, I don't trust Segate.

Reminds me of the definition of insanity as quoted by Albert Einstein - Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results....:confused:

I had a WD my book fail and I put in a warranty claim and they never even replied!

Bought a few recertified drives from WD, never had a problem. Have some heat.

Original drive: Goes through full factory process, with all standard quality control processes. The drives will have a low percentage failure rate.

Recertified: We do not know what this means. It might just be some rudimentary checks and repackaging at the UK importers. They might make a repair, but what would that mean ? I would not expect there to be routine failures with the non-moving parts.
The resale price sets a ceiling on the amount of time that can be spent testing the drive, so if it is an intermittent fault, how do we know they would detect it during the recertification process ?

I wouldn't risk my data for such a small saving. The 5 failures out of 5 post does not surpise me.

and for the average user that is completely overkill

HOT from me, got one on my xb1 one, if it fails I'll just redownload everything, it's not like I've lost anything apart from the time it takes to re-download.

I wouldn't use it to store anything of massive importance but then saying that anything of mass importance I have backed up on an external HDD which I keep at work and on cloud storage so could probably use this as a primary drive anyway.

I got 2tb from Amazon

I checked the warranty on WD website

Expiration Date: -

Status: Out of Region

Is this normal as it doesn't show any warranty or expiration date help please

I can't register the product online it's not possible I filled in my details keeps telling me

Please fix the following:
There is not enough space on the disk.

I used to be dubious about recertified hard drives but have a few now and never had any problems with any of them.
Great price for a 1tb portable. keeping my eye out for a nice 2tb deal to go in my ps4.

Hit or miss if it even gets shipped.
Hit or miss if its new condition or all scratched up.
Hit or miss if its SMART status shows it being used for a year or few days.
Hit or miss if you get a WD Green or a white label refurb disk.
These are the rules of the WDC store!

Mine arrived doa and I has to pay to ship back a replacement.

Out of interest, of those of you that have had bad experiences, did you all order recertified from WD or refurbished from other suppliers? I've never bought either (until now) so wondering if the quality varies by suppler.

Just to add my comments to the mix. Bought a 2.5" usb3 2TB recertified drive from the WD store a year back and still going strong. Remember it will only be the circuit board that is faulty and replaced, the actual drive platters and casing are assembled in dust free environments. It just would not be economical to take apart and re-assemble the 'faulty' drives. So no more likelihood of the replaced controller board failing than on a brand new drive.

And as previous posters have said, if the data is that important have more than one copy anyway.

had one of these for a while, havent had a problem with it
as said any drive can go bad, they why you backup three times, if data is so important

i have this in a tv box, works great with it

No warranty will get your data back or recovered. So if you want to pay more for brand new with longer warranty - sure go for it.

Does re certified actually mean reconditioned?

Ive got a few drives and only had problems with 2 ... mind I did drop them on a wooden floor while in use, one toshiba and 1 seagate ... both were replaced free of charge .. :wink:

Quite right, but some people allow suppliers to take the mick. Personally, I've never been a penny out of pocket when a product has failed.

Mind you, I wouldn't be wasting my time on a recertified HDD. There are 2 ways of looking at it. Either your data matters and you find the extra £10 to buy a new drive. Or, if your data doesn't matter, don't buy anything (which is always the best way of saving money)

Well there are other ways to look at it. All drives fail sooner or later anyway. £30 for an extra backup of my music and videos isn't a great outlay and should both of my NAS drives fail simultaneously it might have been the best 30 quid I ever spent!

​cool. Thanks for the heads up :smiley:

My time is worth money, quicker to pop it in the post for 4 quid than spend an hour on the phone getting your 4 quid back.

Back in stock if anyone is still interested.

A good way to impress your friends is to buy three of these and leave them on your desk.
They will think you are a security expert keeping three copies of everything, and so rich that you can afford three of these at full price.
And if you never plug them in, failure won't be a problem.
It's a win/win situation as far as I see it.

Ordered last week, paid with paypal...no confirmation or dispatch email yet. Has anyone got theirs yet?

It can take 2/3 weeks