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:
- MyPassport:
- Elements:
- Gaming:
Leave a Comment
Top Comments
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
The funniest reason for a return is something along the lines of:
"this 1TB drive only has ~950GB of free space"
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
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
I've also never understood defragging, which would bring about failure sooner. It's better to just free up space.
Badblocks will cause a bad drive to fail which is what you want so you can immediately return it instead of storing all of your data, only for it to fail sometime, losing the money spent on it afterwards.
Overall, I think you are confused. Writing to a HDD does not have the same negative effects as writing to a SDD. Its lifespan is not impacted since it does not use flash technology.
Tried contacting WD on ebay with no avail. It's been too long to claim anything via PayPal.
How to warranty and return/replace it.
Found the warranty link so you can file a claim: https://pages.ebay.com/refurbishe...#c
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
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!
Badblocks will cause a bad drive to fail which is what you want so you can immediately return it instead of storing all of your data, only for it to fail sometime, losing the money spent on it afterwards.
Overall, I think you are confused. Writing to a HDD does not have the same negative effects as writing to a SDD. Its lifespan is not impacted since it does not use flash technology.
My method of simply using several hard drives for multiple copies of data and replacing one if need be would save time, wear and tear and make more sense for me over the long term than extensive error checks or defrags imo - even if I don't find a bad hard drive until later, vs right away.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
Leave a Comment