“Refurbished? How exactly do you refurbish a solid state drive?? Just format it? Replace the NAND? If I buy it and run a SMART diagnostic on it, what will the "SSD life %" be? How many hours powered on will it report?”
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I snagged a Samsung T5 1 TB drive for $117 as an online purchase. It's a rare price for this drive, but occasionally seen. The drive looked brand new and a "drive health" utility indicated in had been powered up six times, two or three of which were mine. Operating time was about two hours, again some of this was my time. On a later trip to Best Buy I asked what makes the drive refurbished. I was told that when the Geek Squad works on someone's PC, they back up everything to these drives, then delete everything when done with the repair. They only use a drive three or four times, then package it for resale as a refurbished. I was also able to register the drive on the Samsung site and get the full warranty.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.I just installed a refurbed SSD, EVO 860 500 GB I purchased o n-line from BB. On arrival is had 2 power on cycles and less than an hour of power on time. No doubt the first purchaser did not realize you need an SATA cable and a power cable to make it work :) and just returned it. BB just wipes them and ships them back out. The refurbed SSD I received was essentially brand new.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.I'm assuming these are what I would call "recertified" and/or "Open Box" instead of refurbished. Assume someone returned them or something; maybe had difficulty installing or they weren't the right drive for their system. I know the one I bought worked fine. It unformatted, so contained no prior data. No idea if it was actually used before and reset or was a return. I would be more concerned about the shorter warranty (6 months) vs manufactured 5-yr warranty, than I would about it's prior use, however, after I registered mine, the Samsung site shows it with a 5-yr warranty. I'm happy.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.Well, that is a good question. All I can tell you is that all three refurbished drives did not exhibit any physical wear or scratches. I would presume that the counters would be returned to zero, but the Samsung Magician utility should be able to give you an indication of the remaining potential life of the SSD. If you have any doubts, just purchase a new one. I have three refurbished drives in three different computers, and they are all working fine.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.Just got mine today (Jul 2019) and I would guess it was just reformatted. Total run time was only 3 hrs and 0.5TB. Warranty is five years or 600TB. Also manufacturing date is June 2019. And I doubt Best Buy will go through the trouble of replacing NAND chips. It's easier to do a an RTV for BB.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.Someone bought it. Probably noticed that prices were dropping. Returned it. Bought another. So yes they formatted it. That's all. After installing it, download the manufacturers software to check the usage. If you don't like what you see, return it for another one or go buy a new one. That's obviously what you will do anyway. From your question I can tell you at least have a general understanding of this. Kids...
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.Mine said very few hours, But its JUNK, Lasted less then a week and was super slow, Ran SMART and said failed with errors!
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.I am not sure the 'Geek Squad' actually checks anything at all. These are customer returns, they just repackage and sells. I got one that had the SATA port completely broken. Pretty sure nobody refurbished anything. So, pretty YMMV what you will get.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.all they do is repackage it.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.They most likely just resell ssd's that have been returned which they factory reset. Also, with geek squad's backup services, they use these ssd's a few times to transfer someone's data into a new system and then factory reset them and sell as refurbished.
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