These contain WD Green's correct?

Recertified? What's that?

Random choice from WD Green, WD Black, HGST or Hitachi drives. Definitively not WD Red.

Any drive that has found its way back to WD cos buyer didn't realise it had to be used with a power supply; was too big to fit in pocket, buyer hadn't received authority from partner to purchase; was too shiny / not shiny enough; or allegedly had a fault that WD couldn't confirm during its post-return testing.

anyone know a decent guide on how to open these without breaking them? found several on youtube but not for this model

Bought a couple at this price a few months ago, done me good so far. Heat

I was tempted to buy one of these wd my book years ago until I did some research and found that the drives will be encrypted which is great for security but if the box has a fault then you are screwed apparently as you cannot just buy another one and transfer to a new one plus as it is encrypted you cannot attach it to a computer as I mentioned earlier it is encrypted. obviously correct me if I am wrong.

Please accept notice of correction.

Saying correction and not correcting isn't correcting

Always have backup of your backups.

Does anyone know if these can be used with an Xbox One?

That's absolutely correct

Yes why wouldn't they?

They are in a 'raw' form suitable for the USB caddy. Take it out and put it in your PC and it won't read it. And Vice Versa

Where's Graham1979?
Not a proper WD recertified deal until he's posted a warning...

afaik there is hardware encoding on the enclosure itself, so if there is a fault in that, then you cannot just place it in another drive and read the data off it. of course if you just remove the drive from the enclosure and use it internally instead then it will just be like a normal drive, you can format it and use it as usual. although, that may void any warranty that is on there if there is damage to the drive enclosure or if there are any stickers saying void if removed that are broken when you try and return it.

Maybe his HDD failed.

Or it could be a problem that they've fixed and your effectively still getting a new HDD. That's why I haven't got a problem buying these recertified HDD's.

I'll provide a warning against the unfathomably crap service of the WD store. It's run by "Digital River", a third party company. They kept my order (and my money) for about two months without shipping anything, and only responded to my emails with the same canned messages of "it's shipping soon!"

There's also zero order tracking so you don't know if your order has actually shipped or not.

Eventually they cancelled and refunded without warning.

The last two pages of this thread make for fun reading:
hotukdeals.com/dea…e=3

That's cos it's a Seagate

Isn't it cheaper per TB to get the 4TB model for £67??

But this is 6TB. You would need to get 3 x 2TB @ £195, 2 x 3TB @ £126, or 1 x 4TB and 1 x 2TB @ £133 to get 6TB any other way. So it would definitely make better sense to buy this, in a sort of clutter-free, Feng Shui sort of way.

These are easy to open, just have to pry open some plastic tabs along the edges of the casing. Couple of screws inside to remove the drive from the caddy and the LED light placement holder. Have done lots of these in the past and they can be used internally and on any console Xbox One, PS4 etc by just connecting the USB lead to your device.

Remember guys, recertified drives are always a gamble, even more so than new manufactured ones.

Over the past 22 years of selling computer hardware and hard drives I can honestly say that Western Digital drives are not only the best selling but also the ones with the lowest amount of returns. Seagate drives in my own experience have the highest rate of returns but are usually quite considerably cheaper.

If the data your plan on storing (Especialy 6TB's of it) is extremely valuable to you and you don't have it backed it up anywhere else on a 2nd drive or in 'the cloud' than I implore you to think again with regard to recert drives. I've seen hundreds of customers of mine over the years complain about dead hard drives and as the warranty for recert drives is usually only between 28 days to 6 months then it simply comes down to how much of a price your valuable data is to you.

I see these hard drive problems almost daily and it's only getting more regular due to single hard drives getting bigger and users therefore storing huge amounts of data in a single place/single drive. On my own personal computer I have always used multiple internal drives rather than store everything on one drive.

Just offering some advice to those that are considering this. Maybe price up multiple drives with a lower capicity and a longer warranty but as I say it depends on the value you place of your data. Good luck if you decide to go for it.!

Good deal but once someone has posted one of the deals on the WD recertified site can we just stop posting every single different drive from there!

Careful! Talking common sense usually gets you banned on this site nowadays :wink:

But each deal is still different and it doesn't automatically follow that people will look for the other possible deals.

Besides, why should you really care?

I thought WD Green had been discontinued a while back; and I'd be amazed if they put high performance Black drives inside. If it is a Black, it deserves a better life than being shackled inside that prison!

You'll find that if you open one of these re-certified drives the Western Digital 'green' overlay sticker will have been removed and replaced with a 'White' re-certification overlay which is a standard part of the re-certification process to prevent the drives from finding their way back into the hardware OEM market.

Just to confirm, the caddys these things come in have hardware encryption built in? Is this linked to WD software?
If you format the entire drive in it's enclosure are you saying that any data will be lost should the enclosure itself fail (the HDD then won't work in another system as encrypted?)

Never heard of this ever, certainly as I've never seen a mention of hardware encryption being automatically used.

I'm assuming this is all linked to WD software and that if you just straight up format the drive there's no issue.

Yes the caddy has hardware encryption built in. The way to avoid this problem is to buy the Elements range which don't have it and is usually cheaper, the 6TB Elements can be had for £93 with the 20% discount new. They send you that code 1 week after making any purchase and can be shared with friends in return for them giving you back the code they get sent.

And yep if the caddy fails your data is lost, until you find another caddy somewhere. The encryption key is stored on the disk itself so you just need another caddy that can read it.

Ah thats a shame, purchased a 6tb in July but never got sent a code (checked my emails). Would bite if I had 20% but can't justify otherwise.

Thats way too optimistic, by definition, its faulty drive that has been repaired. or should have been repaired because my surely didnt. my experiences with WD hasn't been great especially their crappy customer serve. my recertified external HDD came with the case deformed due a broken off peg and the usb wire bended. I first demand a replacement unsuccessfully and then just replacement wire but i was tossed around department, each saying its not their area. so i just told them to **** off and took the HDD out to be used as internal

great price for this. i've had 2 or 3 before and pulled the drives out. before doing so i checked the discs, copied a few gb over, checked, deleted, checked, copied more, checked, deleted partition, made a new one, checked, copied, checked, deleted and then filled the drive up as by that point any obvious errors would have been found. a combination of guitar plectrums, penknife and screwdriver got the drive out. connecting to the pc and i couldn't see any data due to the encryption that's on the caddy connector. but then i checked the drive, deleted and make a new partition, repeating the initial checking process i mentioned and then filled the drive up and they've been fine. by filling the drive before you remove it you are more likely to discover any problems with the drive before you open it and blow the warranty

one of the drives i got that was a recert failed when reformating after deleting the partition the first time around, and all the other drives i've had have been fine following that process, so whilst not necessarily perfect it has worked for me and saved me some pain. however the customer service was pretty awful and it took two weeks from delivery to get a refund even though i contacted WD the same day i got the drive to report the problem. i did get a discount code for 10 or 20% and ended up getting a "new" 8tb drive to replace the faulty 6tb (the code doesn't work on recerts), so after some minor hassle i got a better deal

for some reason the 8tb drive didn't have the encryption which saved me spending 2 days copying data a second time

it's unlikely if you open the drive you will be able to put it back together without showing signs you've removed the drive before as the plastic bits will break/bend when you open it

Correct

These make a great gift for people who've wronged you in the past.

Yes it is, especially as I ordered 3 to add to my Drobo 8 bay NAS device

I don't see a buy or add to cart button?

So you're saying you can't actually use the 20% code you receive yourself, it has to be used by someone else (different address) to purchase.

Awesome deal for the amount of storage, thanks for posting, heat added!

I got an emailed code which said 20% off your next purchase within 30 days. Code didn't work, so asked for another one. They've told me they will manually apply a partial refund.... time will tell I guess!

Interestingly the refurb I got had a WD Blue drive inside it (4tb) and no mention of the recertified on the label! Be curious to see whats in my next one. Also of note, I tested the drive with ext4 in the caddy and I could still read it when I plugged it into my linux box - not sure if Linux has added support for the WD formatting or if it was blind luck.

i had hassle applying the code too. i think i had to use IE after clearing cookies, and had to click the link in the email to open up IE to do it. it wouldn't work with firefox, perhaps cuz of the adblocker pop up stuff. i did call them about it and they said they could apply if after i placed the order, but i wasn't going to risk it after umpteen customer service calls getting nowhere. i got it working in the end though

So where do you buy this? From WD themselves?

I ordered one of these yesterday, it just made more sense than buying the 4TB version, even if it does work it more per MB. I'm hoping to daisychain this to my My Cloud 3TB for backup. Has anyone else here done this?

Beware! I bought a recertified drive about 6 months ago to replace a genuine I bought a few years ago. It seemed to work fine, but then I noticed I kept getting pops and crackles on my music recordings, so it just wasn't as fast as my old one. I'm guessing the seek time was compromised. I expect if I was just storing files I would not have noticed the write time sometimes being a little longer. I'll never buy another one. Why gamble and save such a small amount of money? I mean, it's less than a night down the pub!

ordered the 6TB one today, wish me lucky :sunglasses:

Of course you can use the code yourself. I just meant if you have a spare code and don't plan on buying anything, then your friend can buy something and they can give you back the code they'll get after their purchase.

You were right to be suspicious, I am definately getting the run around. They just told me I can use the code on my next purchase even though its my second purchase. Argh! Lesson learned!

during my conversations in getting a faulty drive sent back, I was told various things which weren't true. to ensure I wasn't messed about, once I had been advised something, before I chose an option I read it back and asked them to check and confirm it was correct, and found it wasn't. for example being told just to post it back at my cost and they would refund me. as international recorded isn't cheap I queried it to find that wasn't right. I think they sent a pdf to print and put on the parcel and call the courier or drop it off somewhere, so I didn't pay in the end, and if I had sent a different way I wouldn't have got refunded. they also said they would tell me when it was back, which they didn't. I had to chase them to confirm they had it back. I remember now the carrier said they should have got it in 2 days, so I called 3 or 4 days later and got the run around. to be fair I've had a few WD drives and if you get it and it works it's fine, and you can save a few quid on refurbs. it can be frustrating being without computer parts mid upgrade for a few days, and when the drives are £100+ not everyone has the funds to just buy a new one and wait for the refund later. they didn't give the option to send a replacement, it was get a refund and place a new order if you want another

got mine today, looks brand new. power on count of 12, 0 power on hours, 0 relocated sectors.

crystal disk info says its a wd60ezrz drive :smile:

Excellent deal.....I have no qualms about the recertified aspect of this drive as I've had several of these drives from WD before that have worked flawlessly. This is a great price and well worth some heat!

next two I got, 1's blue and 1 is green. I haven't opened the cases yet - like to fill them to capacity and check smart status first.

Got mines yesterday and as I took it out of the packaging, my enclosure is rattling. Theres a screw or something inside which has come loose in transit or something.

Been trying to get in-toich with WD support but no luck, even their website is absolute garbage for it.

This size is out of stock according the website, 4Tb and 3Tb left

Got a blue in mine, with no recertifed sticker on it, just on the enclosure.

Broke a clip taking it out so hope I don't have to return it :worried:

Put 2TB on it so far and HDTune reports all green squares :smile: