Not sure if this is the right place to ask or not.

I had a WDC drive that went south inside the warranty. RMA'd it and got a recertified drive as a replacement. That drive also went south in a few months. After arguing with them, I got them to RMA the second drive and they sent me yet another recertified. When WDC recertifes drives they flash the firmware and replace the label. Is there any way to figure out the original build date? Are there numbers on the pcb I can look at? Does the qr-code looking thing have any info?

I don't know where that info can be found, other than to call WD with the serial number and ask them if they have a complete history of that drive.

Otherwise, you can check the date code on the ICs on the PCB and that will give you a rough idea of when the PCB was made, at least.

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how did you know the second one was recertified? can you use that info to tell? or don't buy WDC, if they cant supply what you want - if it is a new drive, not recert. that would be my recommendation.

Well, I highly doubt they'll give me any of that information.


I can't see the chips without breaking the seals and detaching the board from the drive body. I'm hoping maybe the other numbers on the board or the other stickers say something.

They slap on a new label that says "Recertified" right above the model number. The date on the label is like the day they sent me the drive.

Also, both recertified drives have some odd extra letter after the date that normal drives don't. One says "V" and the other says "H". Anyone know what these mean?

Try reading the drive's firmware modules. Module 02 contains a manufacture date.

http://sediv2008.narod.ru/Easy3.9Passwo ... 567890.rar

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

You do understand that that is not ALL they do right? It isn't like they run another test, this time it passes, so the just stick a label on it and hope for the best..

I would imagine during the self scan process for "recertifying" the drives, this would be updated to the current date.

I don't know for sure, as I don't recertify drives, but I reckon it would.

Would be interesting to find out though

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The same thought occurred to me.

FWIW, I've been looking at the modules for a WD10EZEX-60ZF5A0. Its MOD 02 has a date of 09-15-2012, but there are MODs 8000, 8003, 8004, 8005, and 8028 which have dates of 9/12/2012, 9/13/2012, and 9/14/2012. In fact MOD 8004 has all of the above dates. I'm wondering if any of these dates would be preserved by the recertification process. ISTM that it would be wrong to conceal all of the drive's history from the customer. For example, do these recertified drives retain their Power On Hours count, or is this count reset to zero?

I'm also wondering whether WD replaces bad PCBs, in which case the IC date codes may not be a definitive indicator of the drive's age.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Uhh.... are we actually sure about that? I mean this honestly. Sure, all drive manufacturers SAY they do all this extensive testing, but considering how cheap and scammy they are about everything else I seriously question what really goes on. You can get a new 1TB drive for like $50 bucks these days and at least half of that is markup. I can't imagine it's cost effective for them to actually take returned drives apart and inspect anything before sending them back out.

FWIW, all WDC recertified drives that I've dealt with personally have had their SMART stuff reset; power-on-hours, start-stop-count, everything.

RECERTIFICATION is not always the same process and is not done the 'hobbyist' way. Data on modules most of the times has nothing to do with rebuild date. P.S. if too many drives in a row go tits up on same system, likely it is the system, regardless how crappy the drives are.