For me hard drives could potentially be bought second hand. However, it is is not coming from someone who does this stuff at a professional level (refurbished in other words), I am not sure if I can trust it. Not because of the quality but because what was in it. Every time I get a refurb drive I have the bad habit to check what was the previous data if readable. One day I am sure I will get a nasty surprise…
However, it is is not coming from someone who does this stuff at a professional level (refurbished in other words), I am not sure if I can trust it.
It’s honestly not even worth trying to use the right terminology these days…
Every seller/manufacturer uses slightly different definitions.
So to clarify, what’s good is:
A product that was sent back to manufacturer and “manufacturer refurbished” meaning that common fail points were inspected and repaired even if a failure would be emmenient but it’s still working
Pretty much anything else, would be bad.
An example of what is bad is:
“Amazon/ebay refurbished” where someone may have wiped the dust off and possibly checked to see if it turned on.
Especially for hard drives, the refurbishing is built into the purchase contract of the new drives. And since the purchaser and manufacturer both understand the refresh is proactive and the old drives still have life in them, it knocks off a percentage on the new drives and that’s where we can find deals.
I think I’ve got a 1TB that’s ~20 years old I got that way. It’s still technically in my main PC, but at this point it’s an unimportant archive drive that just doesn’t get read or wrote very often.
I’ve just literally never had a HDD or SD die tho. I don’t know why people act like they’re disposable parts of a PC still.
My definition of refurb is anyone that actually has a store and only deals with this stuff. Examples are western digital themselves or Seagate, or shops like true base
For me hard drives could potentially be bought second hand. However, it is is not coming from someone who does this stuff at a professional level (refurbished in other words), I am not sure if I can trust it. Not because of the quality but because what was in it. Every time I get a refurb drive I have the bad habit to check what was the previous data if readable. One day I am sure I will get a nasty surprise…
It’s honestly not even worth trying to use the right terminology these days…
Every seller/manufacturer uses slightly different definitions.
So to clarify, what’s good is:
Pretty much anything else, would be bad.
An example of what is bad is:
Especially for hard drives, the refurbishing is built into the purchase contract of the new drives. And since the purchaser and manufacturer both understand the refresh is proactive and the old drives still have life in them, it knocks off a percentage on the new drives and that’s where we can find deals.
I think I’ve got a 1TB that’s ~20 years old I got that way. It’s still technically in my main PC, but at this point it’s an unimportant archive drive that just doesn’t get read or wrote very often.
I’ve just literally never had a HDD or SD die tho. I don’t know why people act like they’re disposable parts of a PC still.
My definition of refurb is anyone that actually has a store and only deals with this stuff. Examples are western digital themselves or Seagate, or shops like true base
Yeah, it’s just typical capitalism stuff.
People see talk about legit refurbs and then think a dust wipe refurb isnthe same thing and get ripped off.