I am curious is anyone has bought one. It seems whenever I search for hard drive deals, many used, so called refurbished drives come up. These are drives that have been in constant use for 3-5 years in data centers. One popular seller is goHardDrive. See the link as an example.
Refurb: 16TB Seagate EXOS X16 Enterprise 3.5" 7.2K RPM SATA Hard Drive (slickdeals.net)
I only get WD 3.5" drives now, because they are much more reliable than Seagate 3.5" drives.
Hereās a current deal that I would consider, except I donāt bother with refurbished drivesā¦
https://slickdeals.net/f/17467359-refurbished-14tb-wd-ultrastar-dc-hc530-sata-6g-3-5-7200-rpm-enterprise-hdd-112-free-shipping-at-goharddrive-wholesale-and-retail-at-ebay
What I do is wait until around Black Friday/Cyber Monday (when the best deal/s pops up), and thatās when I buy external WD 3.5" hard drives brand new, and then shuck them to make them internal drives.
Iāve never been a fan of consumer level referbs. They always seemed to crap out earlier than a new drive. These are for returns from warranty replacement.
The enterprise drives might be another story.
I see Amazon has the same drive for just a few bucks more.
14Tb on Amazon.
Remember that these are data center drives and will have a bit of a difference on how they handle errors.
Still for less than half price, as long a there are good backups - Why not give it a shot?
Just test the crap out of it when it first gets in.
All the Best,
Jeff
The 12tb version for$83 is pretty good if there was a NAS to flesh outā¦
12tb HDD
On Amazon some of the reviews say the drives need to use a molex to SATA power power cable to get the system to see the drive.
Weird.
From Toms HW.
During our (ongoing) evaluation of a Seasonic Prime Ultra power supply (PSU), we noticed a small detail that previously escaped our attention: the existence of the power disable (PWDIS) feature in HDDs that follow the newer SATA 3.3 (announced on February 16, 2016) and SATA 3.2+ specifications.
This feature utilizes the third pin (P3) of the SATA connector, which in the older SATA specifications is tied to the first (P1) and second (P2) pins, and all of them carrying the 3.3V rail to the drive in use. According to the newer SATA specs, P3 is now independent and transfers the power disable signal. This means that if you combine a PSU with the older SATA connectors, featuring 3.3V at P3, and a new HDD that supports the power disable feature, the HDD wonāt ever start because it will see a continuous high-state signal on P3. It will get stuck in a hard reset condition, which will prevent the HDD from spinning up.
The combination of legacy SATA connectors with new HDDs supporting the PWDIS feature can cause major headaches to users, but the fix is easy, at least if you donāt have many of those new HDDs to power. You can totally bypass the 3.3V rail (which after all isnāt used in HDDs) by using a simple 4-pin Molex-to-SATA adapter to supply power to the HDD. This adapter will remove the 3.3V signal from P3 of the SATA connector, and the HDD will start normally; however, there will be no PWDIS support.
Speaking of the PWDIS feature in the 3.3 and 3.2+ SATA specifications, its purpose is to allow users to manage the power consumption of SATA devices remotely and also provides the ability to hard-reset the drive from a distance in case you need to power cycle it. This feature is mainly designed with business environments in mind, where the HDDs are installed in storage enclosures located in remote facilities.
Currently, there are a number of HDDs supporting the power disable feature, and that number will only continue to grow. Some companies also offer the corresponding products in two versions, one with PWDIS support and one without, in order to avoid compatibility problems. Further, if youāre looking to buy HDDs for NAS servers, you should also pay attention to this issue and check to be sure your hardware is PWDIS compatible.
Yep, this is a problem when shucking WD drives.
I bought this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B012BPLW08
and then followed the directions in Solution #2 here:
To be fair, the drives back blaze bases this on (mainly WD red) and the drives you find in external enclosures (WD green) are very different - not sure how applicable one is for the other.
Iād rather trust a Red with 1-2 years datacenter use than a new consumer drive.
All of my WD drives have white labels and Iāll take a brand new drive over a used or refurbished drive anyday. 
EDIT:
Hereās a Reddit thread about the differences between red and white labelsā¦
https://new.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/dbzpch/wd_red_vs_white_label_that_are_in_easystores/
I bought a 1 Tb Crucial X8 for half price in December. I received another (used) NVMe drive and bought the enclosure that dissipated heat well enough so it didnāt fail in larger data transfers. Too many WDs failed on me and the Seagates, ran everyday, failed too soon. These SSDs, I hope, will be reliable for work and good for storing family memories.
So, I wouldnāt rely on anything refurbished and will wait for sales on new stock.
HDD failure rates are usually highest in the first 1-3 months, and then surge again after a few ten thousand hours as far as I am aware. Refurbished āused to run 2-3 years in a datacenter and is well broken in, sold because they are paid off and get replacedā are a decent choice. Refurbished āhad a defect, was repaired by the manufacturer and is now sold as B stockā - nah. Not trusting that.
SSDs in a NAS work well. Just donāt use them to archive data and store them outside of a PC. SSDs need regular power to refresh their NAND cells, otherwise they start getting dementia 
If I want to archive data - a spinner is the way to go.
Iāve had HDDs that are several decades old fire up just fine. MFM anyone?
I used to tell my clients that they should pick external drives of different models / manufacturer. The idea being that a bad batch is, hopefully, not going to happen across both.
All the Best,
Jeff
PS have had good experiences with the WD Black line. 7200rpm, 5 year warranty. Made for desktops, not servers or NAS.
Iāve found WDās cheaper drives are better than Seagateās (if you stay away from both brandsā SMR drives, all SMR drives suck), but when running storage at scale, Seagateās NAS to enterprise grade drives are better. Backblaze often use consumer grade HDDs including shucked external drives.
I wouldnāt buy refurb HDDs of any brand though - if you do, check the SMART data for power on hours, power cycles, and head load/unload count.
Best way is something like Glacier. Hard drives do fail when sitting idle.
I agree with most of the comments and I also never considered buying a used hard drive. I am just to surprised GoHardDrive sells tens of thousands of them.
For bulk storage in fault tolerant arrays and with good backups, I can see the value. At the price it may well be a viable option. I am seriously consider upgrading my NAS. Currently using 4 6TB drives in RAID 5. Obviously going to 4 12 TB drives will give me lots more room. I back up regularly. So if I got 3 or more years out of refurbs at this price it is worth it.
OTH, I wouldnāt do it for a single dive configuration for something like storage on a PC.
They somehow are able to offer a 5 year guarantee.
I will probably get one to try. Its only for garbage data.
I had storage arrays that ran for 10 years with enterprise level drives in them. As long as they stayed spinning the seemed to las longer than the rest of the hardware. The only time I had failures was a power outage forced me to shut them down. It got to the point where, if a drive failed, the only thing available was refurbed drives. So that is what I used. Granted, by that time the arrays were relegated to non-critical storage.