I have 3 2TB drives that are out of warranty in a few months. I am debating on whether to RMA them to get new replacement refurb drives that will give me an extra year of warranty, or just leave the existing drives since I haven't had any issues with them.

 

I am sort of 50/50 either way and thought I'd see other people's opinion.

I have 3 2TB drives that are out of warranty in a few months. I am debating on whether to RMA them to get new replacement refurb drives that will give me an extra year of warranty, or just leave the existing drives since I haven't had any issues with them.

 

I am sort of 50/50 either way and thought I'd see other people's opinion.

You might just get the remaining warranty that your original drives had.  I've seen posts from others that said that but I don't have first hand knowledge of it.

WD refurbs just give you what you had left on the warranty of the drive you're replacing. You don't get another year.

Oh.... for some reason I thought refurbs came with a one year warranty. I guess that makes this whole conversation moot!

 

Never mind... nothing to see here. 

In addition to the questionable ethics of RMA'ing a drive that hasn't actually failed, you'll also fail in your quest to get a free warranty extension.    I can confirm that both WD and Seagate warrant replacement drives until the warranty expiration date of the original drive, and I suspect that's true for virtually all other manufacturers as well.    In fact, if you do an advance replacement with WD, and then do a warranty check on the drive you receive, it will have an expiration within 30 days -- but when they receive your original drive the warranty end date will be adjusted to match your original drive.

 

I have 3 2TB drives that are out of warranty in a few months. I am debating on whether to RMA them to get new replacement refurb drives that will give me an extra year of warranty, or just leave the existing drives since I haven't had any issues with them.

 

I am sort of 50/50 either way and thought I'd see other people's opinion.

 

If your drives are working well I would absolutely not RMA them! Refurb drives are drives that have been sent back for replacement due to some user defect. The manufacturer runs some diagnostics on the drive, resets the Smart system, and if everything passes sends it out the door. It doesn't mean the defect the original owner had is fixed, but maybe the second owner is not as discriminating and won't find it.

 

Although the % of truly defective drives is probably no where near 100%, I still view them skeptically. If I have one that works with no smart errors, I'll stick with it!

Good points. I am looking at building an UnRAID server for my brother with these drives and don't want to hear about it if one of the drives fails in the next couple of months, so was trying to come up with a solution that minimizes my potential headaches.

 

I guess I will stick with what I have.

 

Thanks for the feedback.