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

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

Yes, refurbished external hdd. I'm always iffy on refurb hdd, but Price/TB is good.
Small ($10) MIR.
Probably not 7200RPM, since it's "green".
USB3.0

Fantom GreenDrive3 2.5TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive - New Enclosure/Recertified Drive - GD2500U3R (Refurbished - 1 Year Warranty) for $69.99 AR w/FS
 

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

Mail in Rebate [buy.com]

Fantom GreenDrive3 2.5TB USB 3.0 external drive (Refurb) $69.99 AR ($10) - FS
 

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.:lmao:


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.

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

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.

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.

great review. agreed! 20 or 30$ not worth my backup :)

Did you read the newegg reviews? People bought 4-5 of them and had half of them DOA or drop dead in a week or two. Then you should take note of the reviewers comments that say that the manufacturer wants them shipped in the original packaging and these ship out in a box full of styrofoam, not the original packaging. Oh, and then you have to pay to ship them to the manufacturer so as to receive another 'recert' unit.

But it sounds like you're decision devolved to "But I won't put anything important on it, ever", in which case you'll probably be safe.

I'd just pay the extra $20 or $30 and figure I've got a drive that'll still be useful 3-5 years from now, rather than a giant headache that is completely worthless in a year.

well...faith I guess stepped in. I ordered one, cancelled it to order again with promo code "backitup", but sold out on my way to checkout. Oh well....would never know now.

out of stock

it shows:
$79.99
Shipping & Handling: $4.99
Tax: $7.12
Order Total: $92.10

how do i get free shipping?

agreed. But what is easier to remember (as far as spelling goes)? Which domain are people more likely to "stumble" onto? I tend to agree that they should have stuck with the domain name buy.com I doubt that the name rakuten will bring more customers. But maybe I am wrong.

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

Well, you only have another 9 and a half months before Black Friday rolls around again.

Of course, the Hitachi doesn't have HDMI, which is always a deal breaker for me.


/$59.99 for 2TB is still more $$$ per TB than this deal. Math... how does it work?

:bounce:

i'd buy it for a dollar :lmao:

it's not a good idea to risk your precious data on a refurb HD

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