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expiredDealiusCaesar | Staff posted Dec 14, 2022 07:50 PM
expiredDealiusCaesar | Staff posted Dec 14, 2022 07:50 PM

Western Digital Portable Hard Drives (Certified Refurb): 1TB My Passport

& More + Free S&H

$25

$50

50% off
eBay
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Update: This popular deal is still available.

Western Digital via eBay has Select Portable Hard Drives (Various Colors, Certified Refurbished) on sale from $24.99. Shipping is free.

Thanks to Staff Member DealiusCaesar for finding this deal.

Note:
This item is Certified Refurbished. It has been professionally restored by a Western Digital approved vendor. Units are usually cosmetically indistinguishable from New products, however some may show signs of light use. Functionally, these units are equivalent to New. Certified Refurbished units will be shipped in a New Brown CR Box.

Available Deals:

Editor's Notes

Written by SubZero5 | Staff
  • About this deal:
    • This price is $25 less (50% savings) than the listed retail price.
  • About this product:
    • Two-year warranty included: Comprehensive warranty serviced by Allstate, US only. Learn more, including how your info is shared here.
  • About this store:
    • Seller Western Digital has 98% positive feedback with over 250,000 items sold.
    • You can view eBay's Return Policy here.
  • Additional Note:
    • Please refer to the Forum Thread for additional discussion regarding this deal.

Original Post

Community Notes
About the Poster
Deal Details
Community Notes
About the Poster
Update: This popular deal is still available.

Western Digital via eBay has Select Portable Hard Drives (Various Colors, Certified Refurbished) on sale from $24.99. Shipping is free.

Thanks to Staff Member DealiusCaesar for finding this deal.

Note:
This item is Certified Refurbished. It has been professionally restored by a Western Digital approved vendor. Units are usually cosmetically indistinguishable from New products, however some may show signs of light use. Functionally, these units are equivalent to New. Certified Refurbished units will be shipped in a New Brown CR Box.

Available Deals:

Editor's Notes

Written by SubZero5 | Staff
  • About this deal:
    • This price is $25 less (50% savings) than the listed retail price.
  • About this product:
    • Two-year warranty included: Comprehensive warranty serviced by Allstate, US only. Learn more, including how your info is shared here.
  • About this store:
    • Seller Western Digital has 98% positive feedback with over 250,000 items sold.
    • You can view eBay's Return Policy here.
  • Additional Note:
    • Please refer to the Forum Thread for additional discussion regarding this deal.

Original Post

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Top Comments

TroyJason
781 Posts
130 Reputation
Although I would normally agree with you - the majority of these hard drives have virtually zero use. Zero.

Western digital is under obligation from most retailers to take returns for any item that might be opened or damaged (box). Large retailers like Best Buy can't take the lawsuit risk for the potential of viruses or adult material that could be on opened items. The vast majority of returns happen because somebody doesn't know how to use the product.

Not because it was defective.

Refurbishing done by western digital is to ensure that the aforementioned risks are removed from the drive and it is in a like-new state.

Remember, nobody buys these as a single source of back up. These are designed to be used as cold storage as just one option amongst many in a persons digital asset management strategy.

Cheers
mobile4kevin
743 Posts
484 Reputation
The most common problem with these besides user error is defective enclosure or DOA HDD. They replace the bad part and sell the unit as a refurb. If you run a drive test, you'll see there's little to no use on the drive itself.

The funniest reason for a return is something along the lines of:

"this 1TB drive only has ~950GB of free space"
itsjero
90 Posts
34 Reputation
First off I don't ever buy refurb hdds. Maybe this one would be different, and at an attractive price, something worth a look.

However I have been through 2 of these both boigh brand new in the 2 and 4tb varieties, white.

Both failed in about a year and a half. Both were used for an Xbox one x as an extended space drive for games.

Rma is a joke and the drives came back but ultimately failed again in about the same time.

It's a bummer too because every other single western digital normal PC 3.5 HDD, from 1tb to 8tb, all are still alive and working. I still even have 2 74gb western digital "raptors" which at the time were the fastest hard drives you could buy on the market (ata/sata.. scsi was obviously much faster but you need an expensive scsi card as well that made a scsi setup very expensive).

I still have a 4x1tb western digital "myspace" 4 bay Nas that has it's original 1tb green drives. I have. 4 bay nv+ Nas with 4x2tb wd black drives. They all work too. Several drives in my PC that range from 1-8tb and all of those work.

Every single western digital product I have bought has never ever failed, and some are 10 years old and still work flawlessly

All except these passport drives. If they had the reliability of the bigger normal wd blue/green/black drives I'd prolly snap one up just because.

But out of all the WD products I've ever owned, the only two that have ever failed are these passport drives. And using them for Xbox one x additional storage wasn't tasking. Heck it was prolly less taxing on the drive than any other WD drive I use. Yet they failed. Just one day disappeared from the Xbox system, I tried connecting to a PC and it wouldn't even detect it. For RMA you print out a paper you tape to the box to return it, all on your dime.

And it took about 6 weeks or so for each drive to get back to me and those failed in almost exactly the same amount of time as the drive itself originally failed new.

Soaybe I just got the bad draws here, but I avoid these specific wd products like the plague.

Really a downer too as it's a one cable drive thats small fast and light. Uses on cable for both power and transfer and for the drive it's quick enough for storage that I needed it for. They also came in like 10 colors and I think even a few special metal colors or metal cases (red, white, orange, blue, black, grey, green, gold, silver, and so on).

Wd struck out with me on these so I'd suggest caution on these and keep your box and receipt and paperwork in case you, like me, have drives that die after about a year and some change.

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Dec 15, 2022 03:51 AM
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hardypotionDec 15, 2022 03:51 AM
2,871 Posts
These come professionally repackaged in new, sealed box
They aren't like Best Buy drives thrown into an old box without inspection
You can tell these went through a more rigorous process
Dec 15, 2022 03:58 AM
1,263 Posts
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S_KlassDec 15, 2022 03:58 AM
1,263 Posts

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Quote from g33kazoid :
My luck with refurbished WD drives from these deals hasn't been stellar. I bought 3 in the last 6 months and two turned out to be duds. One didn't pass a drive test out of the box and the 2nd gave drive failure SMART warnings in <6 months and it was a NAS so it never moved.

YMMV, and if it's something important going on one of these, always have a backup.
You sound like an educated consumer so you might already know this but these USB backup drives typically have lower end consumer disks in them. They are not rated for 24x7 NAS power-on/use nor are they setup for the environment of a multi-disk enclosure. NAS rated disks are built better/differently and cost more $.
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Dec 15, 2022 04:00 AM
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Dec 15, 2022 04:01 AM
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Dec 15, 2022 04:06 AM
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Jeepermany2kDec 15, 2022 04:06 AM
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Quote from itsjero :
First off I don't ever buy refurb hdds. Maybe this one would be different, and at an attractive price, something worth a look.

However I have been through 2 of these both boigh brand new in the 2 and 4tb varieties, white.

Both failed in about a year and a half. Both were used for an Xbox one x as an extended space drive for games.

Rma is a joke and the drives came back but ultimately failed again in about the same time.

It's a bummer too because every other single western digital normal PC 3.5 HDD, from 1tb to 8tb, all are still alive and working. I still even have 2 74gb western digital "raptors" which at the time were the fastest hard drives you could buy on the market (ata/sata.. scsi was obviously much faster but you need an expensive scsi card as well that made a scsi setup very expensive).

I still have a 4x1tb western digital "myspace" 4 bay Nas that has it's original 1tb green drives. I have. 4 bay nv+ Nas with 4x2tb wd black drives. They all work too. Several drives in my PC that range from 1-8tb and all of those work.

Every single western digital product I have bought has never ever failed, and some are 10 years old and still work flawlessly

All except these passport drives. If they had the reliability of the bigger normal wd blue/green/black drives I'd prolly snap one up just because.

But out of all the WD products I've ever owned, the only two that have ever failed are these passport drives. And using them for Xbox one x additional storage wasn't tasking. Heck it was prolly less taxing on the drive than any other WD drive I use. Yet they failed. Just one day disappeared from the Xbox system, I tried connecting to a PC and it wouldn't even detect it. For RMA you print out a paper you tape to the box to return it, all on your dime.

And it took about 6 weeks or so for each drive to get back to me and those failed in almost exactly the same amount of time as the drive itself originally failed new.

Soaybe I just got the bad draws here, but I avoid these specific wd products like the plague.

Really a downer too as it's a one cable drive thats small fast and light. Uses on cable for both power and transfer and for the drive it's quick enough for storage that I needed it for. They also came in like 10 colors and I think even a few special metal colors or metal cases (red, white, orange, blue, black, grey, green, gold, silver, and so on).

Wd struck out with me on these so I'd suggest caution on these and keep your box and receipt and paperwork in case you, like me, have drives that die after about a year and some change.
You had the wrong drives for your application.

They're not intended to be left running for extended lengths of time like you would do for a gaming console. They're in plastic cases that have zero cooling, and almost no ventilation, so sure they're not going to last very long. Thats the price you pay for portability, which you don't even need with a gaming console.

These things are for copying data to and fro, and then unplugging.
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Dec 15, 2022 04:18 AM
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BlueRaccoon1085
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Dec 15, 2022 04:18 AM
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Quote from jaybago808 :
If you care about your data. Step away from REFURBS. Like why do they even make them.
You can always use a program like HDDScan or Victoria to see if it has errors and likely to fail. A good drive should bring back zero errors.

https://hddscan.com
https://m.majorgeeks.com/files/de...ndows.html
1
Pro
Dec 15, 2022 04:25 AM
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BlueRaccoon1085
Pro
Dec 15, 2022 04:25 AM
3,223 Posts
Quote from g33kazoid :
My luck with refurbished WD drives from these deals hasn't been stellar. I bought 3 in the last 6 months and two turned out to be duds. One didn't pass a drive test out of the box and the 2nd gave drive failure SMART warnings in <6 months and it was a NAS so it never moved.

YMMV, and if it's something important going on one of these, always have a backup.
That's why you should check all hard drives you buy with error checking programs before storing all your data.

Note: See my above comment for recommendations.

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Dec 15, 2022 04:37 AM
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BlueRaccoon1085
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Dec 15, 2022 04:37 AM
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Quote from BubbaT :
Yeah, I bought a couple from WD Ebay earlier this year off this post.

https://slickdeals.net/f/15795529-western-digital-1tb-refurb-portable-hard-drives-my-passport-30-wd-easystore-25-more-free-s-h

Crystal Disk Info said they were all pretty much brand new, less than 10 minutes of uptime each. I haven't had any issues so far, other than the expected slowness of them being HDDs.
I think WD erases the hard drive information and puts it in a brand new enclosure so you would think it is new and be less likely to return it.

Mine brought 0 hours when I bought it earlier this year, similarly with other posters.

On the bright side, I did run bad blocks on Linux and it reported no errors or bad sectors.
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Dec 15, 2022 04:39 AM
373 Posts
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CosbysQuaaludesDec 15, 2022 04:39 AM
373 Posts
I bought one of these the last sale around. Shake it and it rattles lol. Just the control arm? I filled it to the brim with *personal use media* and it seems everything is intact and still rattles. No bad or reallocated sectors tho. Normal?
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Dec 15, 2022 04:41 AM
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MutantchipmunkDec 15, 2022 04:41 AM
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These drives are like new. I first bought one about 5 years ago for my ps4 and now I use it with my ps5 and still no issues. Bought another one for my Xbox one s and moved it to my Series X. Bought 2 more for pc storage needs, and another for my Series S. Crystal disk always showed real low hours and everything passed.
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Dec 15, 2022 04:45 AM
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BlueRaccoon1085
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Dec 15, 2022 04:45 AM
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Quote from CosbysQuaaludes :
I bought one of these the last sale around. Shake it and it rattles lol. Just the control arm? I filled it to the brim with *personal use media* and it seems everything is intact and still rattles. No bad or reallocated sectors tho. Normal?
It depends on how hard you are shaking it. If you are shaking it hard, that's normal. I wouldn't shake it because you can damage the platter.
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Dec 15, 2022 05:17 AM
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Dec 15, 2022 05:59 AM
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BIG4Dec 15, 2022 05:59 AM
130 Posts
Thanks OP, pulled trigger on 2T @$30, $5 saving from my eBay following list
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Dec 15, 2022 06:12 AM
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BlueRaccoon1085
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Dec 15, 2022 06:12 AM
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Quote from rachleff :
Great price BUT DO NOT BUY! NEVER under any circumstances by a refurbished hard drive. Take it from a 25 year tech, do not do it.
Have you ever thought of using drive checking software or running badblocks in Linux to overwrite the entire drive with 1's and 0's and check if bad sectors develop?
Last edited by BlueRaccoon1085 December 14, 2022 at 10:15 PM.

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Dec 15, 2022 06:14 AM
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