£10 off £100 spend on Western Digital drives (recertified)

mrcheez

Spotted this on HUKD.. spend £100 on the UK Western Digital shop and enter code WDSTORECPN to get £10 off.

https://www.wdc.com/en-gb/products/wd-recertified.html

Use Parcel Wizard/Motel to get it posted to Ireland

(the code doesn't seem to work on the Irish site)


Just bought 2 of the "new" My Book 3TB for total of €132 delivered + €3.85 Parcel Wizard (one for the PC and one for the PS4).

You can get a 6TB (old version) for £104.99 (approx €119) as well.

stimpson

Not to rain on your parade, but I always steer clear of recertified drives. To me, recertified means "already broke once". My data is worth more to me than the price difference of a brand new drive.

Phonicks

stimpson wrote: »

Not to rain on your parade, but I always steer clear of recertified drives. To me, recertified means "already broke once". My data is worth more to me than the price difference of a brand new drive.

Chances of your computers hard drive (data) and the external hard drive (backup) failing at the same time is slim, very slim

stimpson

Phonicks wrote: »

Chances of your computers hard drive (data) and the external hard drive (backup) failing at the same time is slim, very slim

I guarantee you that 90% of the people who use computers do not back up their data (source: me trying to recover years of priceless photos for friends and family).

These will be used to store media for the most part.

mrcheez

stimpson wrote: »

Not to rain on your parade, but I always steer clear of recertified drives. To me, recertified means "already broke once". My data is worth more to me than the price difference of a brand new drive.

I dunno, I've been using a recertified drive for 6 years with nae probs

Anyway deal is there if you want it

Phonicks

stimpson wrote: »

I guarantee you that 90% of the people who use computers do not back up their data (source: me trying to recover years of priceless photos for friends and family).

These will be used to store media for the most part.

Yeah, but you and me and others reading this will be fine

ED E

stimpson wrote: »

Not to rain on your parade, but I always steer clear of recertified drives. To me, recertified means "already broke once". My data is worth more to me than the price difference of a brand new drive.

If you're relying on a drive to protect your data, you're doing it wrong.

stimpson

ED E wrote: »

If you're relying on a drive to protect your data, you're doing it wrong.

I'm not. I have parity protected storage and all my important stuff has offsite and/or cloud backups. It's the other 90% of the population I'm worried about.

The saving basically derives from the shorter warranty. 6 months vs typically 2-3 years. You are paying less and getting shorter coverage. So it is a straightforward trade-off.

What I don't know is whether you are covered by EU law in addition to the manufacturer warranty. I'm not sure if it's legal for them to say you only get 6 months warranty.

stimpson

Deleted User wrote: »

The saving basically derives from the shorter warranty. 6 months vs typically 2-3 years. You are paying less and getting shorter coverage. So it is a straightforward trade-off.

What I don't know is whether you are covered by EU law in addition to the manufacturer warranty. I'm not sure if it's legal for them to say you only get 6 months warranty.

EU and Irish consumer legislation do not cover reconditioned goods AFAIK.

uck51js9zml2yt

Deleted User wrote: »

The saving basically derives from the shorter warranty. 6 months vs typically 2-3 years. You are paying less and getting shorter coverage. So it is a straightforward trade-off.

What I don't know is whether you are covered by EU law in addition to the manufacturer warranty. I'm not sure if it's legal for them to say you only get 6 months warranty.

Whether the warranty is 6 months or 3 years is immaterial. If the drive goes and your data is lost, no amount of warranty will get it back!

Ibrahim Dead Froth

Ibrahim Dead Froth wrote: »

Whether the warranty is 6 months or 3 years is immaterial. If the drive goes and your data is lost, no amount of warranty will get it back!

If you are concerned about data loss due to drive failure then it means you do not have a good backup strategy.

I am not concerned about data loss. The way I look at recertified drives is to weigh up the saving vs shorter warranty. How much am I saving? What are the chances the drive fails in 3 years? How much will it cost to replace the drive?

In some cases I would definitely buy a recertified. In others I would not. My stance is fluid because for example 10 years ago, I would have expected to replace a failed drive for less than the original purchase price (HDD prices use to halve every 14 months). Nowadays if I buy an 8TB drive and it fails out of warranty, it might cost more to replace it (due to price fixing).

mrcheez

I'll mainly be using the drives for PS4 / Media files, which can easily be re-downloaded if needs be.

Are flash drives more secure as a "safe" long-term OFFLINE data storage for photos etc?

stimpson

Flash drives (it SSD's) are far more expensive per GB.

For photos I use offsite backup on a family members server, plus Google Photos (unlimited photo storage @ 12 megapixel), plus my server is parity protected so I can lose a single hard drive and rebuild its contents without losing any data.

mrcheez

stimpson wrote: »

Flash drives (it SSD's) are far more expensive per GB.

For photos I use offsite backup on a family members server, plus Google Photos (unlimited photo storage @ 12 megapixel), plus my server is parity protected so I can lose a single hard drive and rebuild its contents without losing any data.

What I mean is... do flash drives "fail" after a few years?

mrcheez

mrcheez wrote: »

I'll mainly be using the drives for PS4 / Media files, which can easily be re-downloaded if needs be.

Are flash drives more secure as a "safe" long-term OFFLINE data storage for photos etc?

Flash drives are less suitable for offline cold storage.

mrcheez

Deleted User wrote: »

Flash drives are less suitable for offline cold storage.

so is there a single device offline storage option for long-term, or a RAID the only option?

I have CDRs from 2000 that are nigh unreadable now, so I take it DVDs aren't recommended either

Slutmonkey57b

For data retention, clay tablets are where it's at folks.

stimpson

mrcheez wrote: »

What I mean is... do flash drives "fail" after a few years?

They have limited rewrites (in the hundreds of thousands, but limited all the same). So for cold storage they are fine but for constant rewrites they could have issues. But cost wise they really aren't a great idea. You'd get several spinning drives for the same money.

stimpson

mrcheez wrote: »

so is there a single device offline storage option for long-term, or a RAID the only option?

I have CDRs from 2000 that are nigh unreadable now, so I take it DVDs aren't recommended either

RAID is not a backup solution. You have some protection with parity, but it's not going to be any use if you mistakenly format it or your house burns down. Offsite and cloud backups are a much better bet.

mrcheez

stimpson wrote: »

So for cold storage they are fine but for constant rewrites they could have issues.

are HDDs more at risk of data getting corrupted over time if left idle (i.e. natural degradation), or much the same as flash drives and fine for cold storage?
(assuming no house burning down or loss thereof!)

As I mentioned before CDRs have proven not to be ideal for cold storage

stimpson

stimpson wrote: »

They have limited rewrites (in the hundreds of thousands, but limited all the same). So for cold storage they are fine but for constant rewrites they could have issues. But cost wise they really aren't a great idea. You'd get several spinning drives for the same money.

For cold storage they are not suitable.

NAND cells suffer from charge leakage over time. A typical SSD or flash drive will experience some level of corruption in a few years if left un-powered.

A stored HDD, basically nothing happens to it in the short term. It will take decades for individual bits to lose their magnetic state. Lubricant will also dry out in the same kind of time-frame.

frozenfrozen

what drives would be in the 6tb mybook for 118 euro? decent deal if it's a 6tb wd red just with a 6 month warranty

mrcheez

mrcheez wrote: »

so is there a single device offline storage option for long-term, or a RAID the only option?

I have CDRs from 2000 that are nigh unreadable now, so I take it DVDs aren't recommended either

CDs and DVDs use mostly organic dyes which are unstable over time. Storage conditions are very important. A cheap disc stored near a window or radiator will fail in a few months.

You can buy archival and inorganic discs which last longer.

mrcheez

Deleted User wrote: »

A stored HDD, basically nothing happens to it in the short term. It will take decades for individual bits to lose their magnetic state.

Interesting thanks. I have several WD Passports gathering dust from 2005 stored in a dark/dry/room-temp location, and in a case, so just curious how long they would last in that condition.

mrcheez

mrcheez wrote: »

Interesting thanks. I have several WD Passports gathering dust from 2005 stored in a dark/dry/room-temp location, and in a case, so just curious how long they would last in that condition.

If they are just sitting there in good storage conditions, they should last a reasonably long time. There is nothing acting on a resting drive which would cause it to wear out or fail in the short term.

Lubricant drying out is probably the first thing that would cause issues. This was a big problem in the old days.

If you have some data which you want to keep for a long time, you should make several copies on different media, different locations etc. You should also checksum it so you can subsequently check each copy for bitrot.

stimpson

Spinning them up occasionally wouldn't hurt either. Moving parts don't like not moving for long periods of time.