How reliable are recertified/refurbished and toshiba hard disks?

[tantrik123]

Processor: Intel Core i3-4130 CPU @ 3.40 GHz
Motherboard: Asus H81M-E
Memory: Transcend 2GB DIMM DDR3 1333 MHz (Channel B)
Undefined 2GB DIMM DDR3 1600 MHz (Channel A)
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64 bit

Dear friends,

In my place recertified and refurbished western digital and seagate hard disks are available. These hard disks possess around 1-2 years of warranty depending on volume size but their prices are significantly lower than their original counterparts (seagate barracuda or western digital blue/black). How reliable and durable are these hard disks compared to their original equivalents?

Also there are toshiba hard disks with similar warranty periods and prices considerably lower than both seagate and western digital hard disks? How reliable and durable are toshiba hard disks compared to western digital and seagate hard disks?

Many years back I used a 80 GB western digital black hard disk which lasted closely to 5 years and then later used a 160 GB seagate barracuda hard disk which lasted for around 3 years and 8 months. Never used a recertified/refurbished and toshiba hard disk before. It would be great if anyone having or not having any kind of experience or expertise with such hard disks would share their views and thoughts here.

Thanks in advance.

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

You know technology has changed in the last 5 years, right?

 

Refurbished/recertified devices are fixed devices. Like a capacitor blew. They fix it, works great, but they can't sell it as retail price.

 

Refurbished drives are more or less the same drive. Why do they have less waranty? Because the companies can not guarantee full life on it.

 

I used refurbished LCD/LED monitors, and had no trouble with them, ever. I recently sold those, but, afaik, are still working.

I also bought several laptops that were refurbished. Work to the day.

 

Just watch out for "Opened Box" devices. Those can be creepy...

 

Edit: I have no knowledge of Toshiba drives, but adhere to the above.

[Tomoko]

"Refurbished hard drive" always seemed odd to me; how does that even work? Wipe the dust off them and put them in a new box? They are just used hard drives so I think it's hard to say. It depends on how much it was used but there's really no way to say for sure. Sometimes they may not have even been installed once and just returned because the buyer didn't need them.

 

As long as they have a warranty they're probably fine; just be sure to keep backups as you would in any other case. Even brand new drives can fail.

Edited January 1, 2018 by Rigby

[Mando]

Refurbished HDDS are clean pulls, nothing more nothing less, they still have x amount of run timer expired.

 

Recertified means its had a platter repair, capacitor replaced etc.

 

Toshiba HDDs are ex Hitachi GST/IBM Travelstar/Deskstar drives iirc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HGST

 

I used to swear by HGST drives.

 

in my experience WD drives last longer than Seagates, in SATA/PATA config, SCSI you cant beat the reliability of Seagate cheetahs.

[Tomoko]

10 minutes ago, Mando said:

Recertified means its had a platter repair, capacitor replaced etc.

Do they really do that? I would have thought it would be cheaper for a company to just scrap it and build a new one.

[Mando]

1 minute ago, Rigby said:

Do they really do that? I would have thought it would be cheaper for a company to just scrap it and build a new one.

some have been known to swap out the platter yes, more enterprise level though. Same tech Disk recovery services use. Needs an ECA env etc.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

You have what sounds like an 3-4 year old system with a moderate amount (4GB) of RAM. 

 

Unless you are immediately running out of disk space and need to upgrade now, I would suggest continuing to save up until you can afford a small (64GB-128GB) SSD and upgrade the system with that.  It will provide a decent performance boost, and you can then continue to look for upgrades to CPU, RAM and HDD storage.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

[tantrik123]

Thanks everyone for their suggestion. Highly appreciate it.

[Xahid]

6 minutes ago, tantrik123 said:

Thanks everyone for their suggestion. Highly appreciate it.

Do not trust refurbished "mechanical devices"

[techbeck]

I would not touch a referbed drive.  They are cheap these days anyway.  Better off using a new drive.

[Mando]

On 1/2/2018 at 5:36 AM, goretsky said:

Hello,

 

You have what sounds like an 3-4 year old system with a moderate amount (4GB) of RAM. 

 

Unless you are immediately running out of disk space and need to upgrade now, I would suggest continuing to save up until you can afford a small (64GB-128GB) SSD and upgrade the system with that.  It will provide a decent performance boost, and you can then continue to look for upgrades to CPU, RAM and HDD storage.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

agreed, an OS SSD would be a nice kick up the a*** on that old box, you could then use the mechanical you have as a data drive.

 

thats about all i would do on the old girl tbh.