I have over a dozen std. HDDs in my "collection", most being Hitachi 3.5" Deskstar (1TB or 2TB). I have found these to be very reliable, but am equally impressed with WD Red series.

On Amazon, I found for sale: "Hitachi Ultrastar A7K3000 2TB 64MB Cache 7200RPM SATA III (6.0Gb/s) Enterprise 3.5-Inch Hard Drive (HUA723020ALA641 (0F12470)) (Certified Refurbished) " .
Note this is Hitachi's top-of-the-line Ultrastar [Enterprise] series, so a step up from my usual Deskstar.

I bought that refurb'd HDD for about $50 delivered. It's my first refurb purchase ever.

It works fine out of the sealed anti-static bag, and is very vibration free (like WD Red) ... but it read/writes noisy (can hear thru external case), and this is not like WD. The read/write noise is typical of 1-2TB Hitachi's I have ca. 2009-2011. Maybe later ones are a bit quieter???

Questions:

Are Ultrastars supposed to be quiet(er) when reading/writing?

Thoughts on Amazon Refurb program? Anyone here with experience using Amazon refurb drives?

Miser pays twice!

Worth checking the acoustic settings on your drive ;@)

Old but may be relevant http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ter ... 084-2.html

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All went well until I plugged the drive in.

Some comments on Amazon suggest refurb'd drives may have re-set hours.
Were they prev. used, never failed, but put back in service.

Google 2007 hard drive study suggested that first few hundred hours of a brand new drive are the ones that determine the longevity/reliability of drive ... once a drive is over that hill, they are usually pretty reliable for the long haul.

I've purchased brand new drives that either did not work out of the box or failed well before their warranty.

... wait - n- see. My data is back'd up across multiple drives anyway