[Leaplist] Refurbished Hard Drive

[Phil Barnett]

On Tue, 2010-02-02 at 19:14 -0800, Ram K. Singh wrote:
> I am looking for a USB Hard Drive of one TB Capacity. I am finding
> many Refurbished drives for a reasonable price. Do the professionals
> have opinion on Refurbished drives?

I buy refurbs of all kinds of electronics all the time and I seldom get
burned. And the savings are significant. The question to answer for
yourself is how does something end up on the market as a refurb.

There are two major sources.

1. Someone bought it and took it back to the place of purchase. It may
not have even been opened. Lots of retailers and lots of manufacturers
return these items to the factory and recertify them. Then they get sold
as refurbs or recerts. This is what makes up the vast majority of all
refurbished products. Studies have shown that about 80-90% of all
refurbs come from this channel.

2. A product is DOA or has significant other shortcomings and is
returned under warranty. These go back for repair and get resold. This
is generally limited to high dollar items. It's not worth the labor to
repair low dollar goods.

This covers about 99% of where refurbs and recerts come from. I won't
say that a hard drive is a good place to fish for refurbs, but I will
bet you that most refurbs are really recerts, meaning they were put back
on a test jig and burned in a second time. If they make it past that,
they are repackaged and resold. Nobody actually worked on them. On low
dollar items, the ones that don't pass recertification go in the trash.

I have bought and used recertified hard drives from Woot! and never
noticed that they worked or lasted any differently from newly purchased
drives. But that is my experience and it may not be what other people
have noticed.

In the long run, the more important thing to shop for before the sale is
the return policy. Any item you get from a place that has a lousy return
policy is likely to end up in your trash if it breaks because they will
make it not worth your time to climb the ladder of obstacles to get a
new one. I prefer Newegg, CDW, J&R Music for their liberal no questions
asked return policy. Yes, you will pay for shipping but you will get
your replacement quickly and without a fight.

That's my 2 cents.


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