Fantom GreenDrive 2.5TB External USB3.0 REFURB, $69.99AR, FS

Fantom GreenDrive3 2.5TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive - New Enclosure/Recertified Drive [rakuten.com]

Mail in Rebate [buy.com]

http://www.rakuten.com/prod/fanto...49679.html

Rakuten (Formerly Buy.com) has this 2.5TB USB 3.0 external drive for $79.99 with a $10.00 rebate and free budget shipping.

It's a refurb, for what it's worth.

I have no idea what drives are stocked in this. I can't say as I've come across 2.5TB drives in the wild, but this seems like a decent deal, given HDD pricing these days.

cheap deal to pop in a desktop!

Being lazy and just looking on newegg, the only internal 2.5TB I can find is this WD Green drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6822136873

I'm wondering if these drives for sale are the "fixed" ones that newegg reviewers report as DOA/Failures.


Great price, but I'm iffy.

If you can crack these open, the price is good enough that 2.5x4 in raid 5 / raidz1 would be worth it. Closer to 6TB after formatting w/ parity? Not bad for $280, not bad at all (that's if you the USB isn't soldered on)!

Anyone pick one of these up before? Comments?

Bought One.

when i tested my fantom hdd it had a number of bad sectors, but it still works.

5400 or 5900?

That's a lot of storage space to take risk on a refurb drive.. Not a bad deal if you want to use it as a backup/clone of your original external drive.

They gave up the great name "buy.com" for the funky name "rakuten" ? What idiots.com.

Quote from zephyrprime : They gave up the great name "buy.com" for the funky name "rakuten" ? What idiots.com.

rakuten is a much bigger name....just not here in the USA. I doubt they'll ever give up the domain though.

Quote from zephyrprime : They gave up the great name "buy.com" for the funky name "rakuten" ? What idiots.com.

Rakuten is a Japanese company (think Japanese Amazon) that bought out buy.com

There isn't anything on a hard drive that can be economically 'refurbished'. So if these had a blown drive, you're getting recertified drive that's had problems before, but tests okay now after a factory reformat. Otherwise you're getting a used hard drive with a new usb controller board. Not really sure which would suck more. Every warranty/recert drive I've ever gotten from anyone died within a few months or a year. Its why hard drive warranties don't matter to me anymore, because whatever they send as a replacement cant be relied on.

Used hard drives are about as good an idea as buying a used transmission on CL. You saved some money, but you'd better do a lot of praying if you're going to do anything important with it.

I'm fully sick of people calling used equipment 'refurbished' because they wiped the dirt off and it seemed to turn on okay. That would be called 'recertified'.

But if it tests okay and you only have it on a few hours a week doing backups you'll hopefully never need, then you saved $20 or $30. Doesn't sound like a good trade.

Bought a 1TB eSATA version a couple of years back. Still works. Don't use it too much anymore though.

Also, for a little while it made a pretty horrifying clicking sound. It went away and doesn't happen anymore (few years now) but it made me a little concerned.