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A word of caution to anyone considering buying one of the 4 TB Hitachi drives listed in the report: There are a lot of vendors selling “refurbished” HGST drive

A word of caution to anyone considering buying one of the 4 TB Hitachi drives listed in the report: There are a lot of vendors selling “refurbished” HGST drives. Do not buy these. As I understand it, there is no such thing as a refurbished hard drive (not economical). They just zero out the SMART data and sell it as new/refurbished. They even look new, but they’re not. I made the mistake of buying one. It had a ton of vibration and started reporting bad sectors immediately. If you want one of these drives, you’re better off buying an actual used one off eBay or something.

iicc 7y ago
"recertified" drives are a thing. https://www.blizzarddr.com/recertified-hard-disk-drives-refurbished-hdd/ https://www.blizzarddr.com/recertified-hard-disk-drives-refu...
- jaclaz 7y ago
  Cannot say nowadays, but once defective multi-platters disks were "refurbished" (and "recertified") by simply disabling the couple of heads on the defective platter(s) in firmware and "downgrade" the capacity specs. It simply makes no sense to actually open a US$ 100 (when new) disk drive to repair it (replacing parts that even in the factory cost money for the cataloguing and storage) to re-sell it at US$ 30 or 40. If you go to the WD page mentioned in the article you linked: https://www.wd.com/en-gb/products/wd-recertified.html https://www.wd.com/en-gb/products/wd-recertified.html you will see how they are all "external disks in a case", those might be subject to a number of "returns" for reasons different from the actual disk inside (cosmetic damage, power adapter (if any), connectors, network card or wi-fi, etc.), so those may (while actually being defective as a whole) well have not a defective disk inside. On the other hand, if they are so good, why would the warranty be limited to 6 months (or less).

iicc 7y ago

"recertified" drives are a thing. https://www.blizzarddr.com/recertified-hard-disk-drives-refurbished-hdd/ https://www.blizzarddr.com/recertified-hard-disk-drives-refu...

jaclaz 7y ago
Cannot say nowadays, but once defective multi-platters disks were "refurbished" (and "recertified") by simply disabling the couple of heads on the defective platter(s) in firmware and "downgrade" the capacity specs. It simply makes no sense to actually open a US$ 100 (when new) disk drive to repair it (replacing parts that even in the factory cost money for the cataloguing and storage) to re-sell it at US$ 30 or 40. If you go to the WD page mentioned in the article you linked: https://www.wd.com/en-gb/products/wd-recertified.html https://www.wd.com/en-gb/products/wd-recertified.html you will see how they are all "external disks in a case", those might be subject to a number of "returns" for reasons different from the actual disk inside (cosmetic damage, power adapter (if any), connectors, network card or wi-fi, etc.), so those may (while actually being defective as a whole) well have not a defective disk inside. On the other hand, if they are so good, why would the warranty be limited to 6 months (or less).