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

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.

refurbished can mean anything, does not necessarily have to do with the drive but can be the enclosure, firmware etc. This has a year's warranty, so go ahead and abuse it (do a bunch of benchmark type testing on it) if your're worried and see if it fails...if it does, you're covered. If it fails after doing that after the first year, not sure how you would have confirmed a new one wouldn't have sufferred the same faith.

Buying as-is vs. buying with a warranty are two different things. I wouldn't store anything valueable on this anyway. Always keep a RAID setup for that and use this for all other things you would use box.com or dropbox for. I guess this could work with pogoplug or the like. I use this for storing rips while I move them around to devices etc.

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

this is not as slick as a brand new 2tb Hitachi Touro for 59.99 that i bought on Black Friday at TigerDirect

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.