HELP! Buying Advice on Time Machine External Hard Drive!

[carbonmotion]

Western Digital is selling their a refurbished version of their "My Book Studio Edition" 1TB FireWire 800/USB 2.0/eSATA for about $170 (grand total). It is much cheaper than the new unit, which is around $350 dollars. The only difference is that brand new units have a 3 year warranty where as the refurbished unit has only a 6 month warranty.

What is your opinion? Are refurbished Western Digital products reliable? Is this a good deal? Should I buy?

Note: I require FW800 for Time Machine

 

[shecky]

unless i have a different drive than you list, we just bought 2 of these brand new at Amazon for $240 each.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VZCEU8

they work great.

 

[carbonmotion]

do you think it's worth it to buy the refurb with only 6 mo. of warranty for the 70 dollars reduction in price?

 

[shecky]

me personally? no. i would buy new. not because of the warranty, but because i would be less worried about my data getting trashed on a new drive than a refurb. even though thats probably irrelevant. price difference is effectively less for me as well as i buy through my business and write it off, so for me its really more like $136 vs. $192 = $56 dollar difference.

 

[BlakTornado]

do you think it's worth it to buy the refurb with only 6 mo. of warranty for the 70 dollars reduction in price?

You could argue that chances are your internal and external won't die at the same time, so it's not the end of the world if the external packs in (although, it most certainly would be an expensive bother).

 

[benmrii]

I recommend refurbished or used products for most things, but external HDs, nah. Pay the extra money, it's worth it for your data.

When a warranty is dropped from 36 months to 6 months that says a lot... to me it says it is worth $70 more.

 

[carbonmotion]

do you guys thing Lacie external harddrives are good? what drives do they use?