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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
149 Comments 74,744 Views
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Deal Details
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.

149 Comments

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Dec 15, 2022 10:04 PM
662 Posts
Joined Jan 2016
Charmed5Dec 15, 2022 10:04 PM
662 Posts
I have a couple of WDMyCloud devices that went offline a few years ago and I just left them sitting on the shelf because I didn't have the patience to fiddle with the WD software.
I found it really clunky, and I am an "IT guy". Has it gotten better?
1
1
Pro
Dec 15, 2022 11:15 PM
3,223 Posts
Joined Dec 2020
BlueRaccoon1085
Pro
Dec 15, 2022 11:15 PM
3,223 Posts
Quote from Charmed5 :
I have a couple of WDMyCloud devices that went offline a few years ago and I just left them sitting on the shelf because I didn't have the patience to fiddle with the WD software.
I found it really clunky, and I am an "IT guy". Has it gotten better?
Their software made my gaming laptop really slow and its driver broke data integrity protection so I uninstalled them.

Edit: I meant memory integrity protection.
Last edited by BlueRaccoon1085 December 15, 2022 at 07:37 PM.
1
1
Dec 15, 2022 11:33 PM
865 Posts
Joined Apr 2021
TalentedHaddock257Dec 15, 2022 11:33 PM
865 Posts
Quote from MWink :
I'll endorse HDDScan. It's the best thing I've tried that runs on Windows. Now I just need to find something comparable that runs on Linux (badblocks is not).
These are SMR drives. Not sure how HDDScan can help too much - the timings will be obscured anyways.

badblocks hammers the drive quite nicely - I use it a lot.
Dec 15, 2022 11:34 PM
3,541 Posts
Joined Dec 2008
missellieDec 15, 2022 11:34 PM
3,541 Posts
Quote from Charmed5 :
I have a couple of WDMyCloud devices that went offline a few years ago and I just left them sitting on the shelf because I didn't have the patience to fiddle with the WD software.
I found it really clunky, and I am an "IT guy". Has it gotten better?
The current software is better than the old WD Smartware. It had a memory leak that I assume was never fixed. It was horrible, I had to cancel the process constantly.
Dec 16, 2022 12:30 AM
243 Posts
Joined Jul 2008
g33kazoidDec 16, 2022 12:30 AM
243 Posts
Quote from S_Klass :
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 $.
Are you replying to the wrong post? I didn't say I was using a USB drive for a NAS. I think you assumed this piece because this specific deal didn't have any NAS drives. My drive was a refurbished 3TB WD RED PLUS NAS drive that I bought, as assembled, in a MyCloud NAS through this same WD eBay store.

The drive that would not pass a drive test out of the box was a refurbished WD 2TB "Thin" usb drive which it appears there's some of those for sale in this deal. Make sure you test it well if you bought one!


1
Dec 16, 2022 12:35 AM
1,263 Posts
Joined May 2013
S_KlassDec 16, 2022 12:35 AM
1,263 Posts
Quote from g33kazoid :
Are you replying to the wrong post? I didn't say I was using a USB drive for a NAS. I think you assumed this piece because this specific deal didn't have any NAS drives. My drive was a refurbished 3TB WD RED PLUS NAS drive that I bought, as assembled, in a MyCloud NAS through this same WD eBay store.

The drive that would not pass a drive test out of the box was a refurbished WD 2TB "Thin" usb drive which it appears there's some of those for sale in this deal. Make sure you test it well if you bought one!
Ah, you bought some other disks and not the ones in OP's posting. It wasn't clear since you said "My luck with refurbished WD drives from these deals hasn't been stellar".

Made it sound like you used these USB drives in a NAS. Never mind then.
Dec 16, 2022 01:16 AM
2,295 Posts
Joined Feb 2022
FaithfulMoon8086Dec 16, 2022 01:16 AM
2,295 Posts
Quote from boridealseekr :
The heck is a Playstation 1U?
It's a ps combined with a Xbox1 and a Wii U
1
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Dec 16, 2022 02:11 AM
130 Posts
Joined Dec 2016
BIG4Dec 16, 2022 02:11 AM
130 Posts
Quote from Gethome :
Can you explain how others can get a $5 saving from an eBay following list?
Sorry for the confusion.

I followed this HD and it used to be $35. Now it dropped to$30. $5 saving
Dec 16, 2022 03:00 AM
328 Posts
Joined Oct 2022
poopiDec 16, 2022 03:00 AM
328 Posts
$25/TB.
Why is this hot again?
Because of hardware encryption?
1
Dec 16, 2022 03:01 AM
1,645 Posts
Joined Dec 2005

This comment has been rated as unhelpful by Slickdeals users.

Dec 16, 2022 03:42 AM
189 Posts
Joined Jun 2014
slickpenguinsDec 16, 2022 03:42 AM
189 Posts
Quote from fuzzyballz :
Turns out they do have 4TB refurb for $60. Perfect for backing up my amateur videos.
Yes! To anyone else looking—it's the orange one
Dec 16, 2022 04:33 AM
15,869 Posts
Joined Nov 2006
BosuxRedsuxDec 16, 2022 04:33 AM
15,869 Posts
thanks in 4 1
1
Dec 16, 2022 10:18 AM
5,885 Posts
Joined Mar 2013
SKV4mDec 16, 2022 10:18 AM
5,885 Posts
Eww these stored someone else's pornography
1
1
Dec 16, 2022 02:20 PM
162 Posts
Joined Apr 2012
GethomeDec 16, 2022 02:20 PM
162 Posts
Quote from BIG4 :
Sorry for the confusion.

I followed this HD and it used to be $35. Now it dropped to$30. $5 saving
Thanks for your reply. That makes sense.

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Dec 16, 2022 03:10 PM
4,841 Posts
Joined Jul 2015
hinnyDec 16, 2022 03:10 PM
4,841 Posts
Quote from hinny :
What is the difference between Passport and Elements models?
Which is better to go with?

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