Factory recertified drives are tested by the manufacturer (Seagate) using the same testing process as new drives.
ST14000NM000E-FR - Seagate Exos X22 14TB SATA - Factory Recertified - $219
12 months seller warranty
1.5% surcharge for CC & PayPal payments, no surcharge for bank transfer
Local stock
Express Post delivery, 1-2 days handling
Bitdefender
Mine came up as
"This site can’t provide a secure connection
pongobyte.com.au sent an invalid response.
ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR"
It doesn't, VirusTotal scan only has two hits as well so probably fine. Seems to be just a really slow website.
The slowness is probably caused by the millions of OzBer's clicking on it ;)
Same here. I sent a "false positive" report to Bitdefender to fix it.
Update: It appears to work OK now with Bitdefender, at least for me.
Incorrect and in fairness to the uploader, my AVAST & Chrome shows the following security cert. info:
"Common Name (CN) www.pongobyte.com.au
Organization (O) <Not Part Of Certificate>
Organizational Unit (OU) <Not Part Of Certificate>
Common Name (CN) R10
Organization (O) Let's Encrypt
Organizational Unit (OU) <Not Part Of Certificate>
Issued On Monday, August 12, 2024 at 10:23:53 AM
Expires On Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 10:23:52 AM
Certificate 0b4fdede7f20f1204c6cfb611a63701bfc390275149c8b98eb72a93124e2002a
Public Key 60e75c02254cac2598f91b42e0781385315efe080350c7e5ff91e243de0ade8c"
In other words, this website is safe as houses…if you run any sort of Chrome based browser (eg Opera) you can easily find this info yourself just by clicking the grey padlock icon next to the url.
No self respecting ecommerce website would use lets encrypt as their signing CA.
Genuinely curious, why not?
It's a valid certificate that does the job of securing data between client and server.
I can set up an ecommerce site with Lets Encrypt just to farm credit card details is the prime example.
Securing\encrypting data is important but equally important is the legitimacy of the site.
The paid platforms can provide a level of validation/assurance that the site you're talking to is legitimate.
@adgnetworks: I'm not sure I understand why you setting up an ecommerce site with Let's Encrypt just to collect card details impacts a legitimate ecommerce site with Let's Encrypt? That would happen on 2 completely different domain.
Let's Encrypt wouldn't sign a certificate and give it to someone for a domain they didn't control. So why would legitimacy be questioned?
@Purec: Because the ONLY thing checked by LetsEncrypt is control of the domain.
Commercial SSL certs can include additional checks to match physical address, ABN numbers, etc.
It's still irrelevant because Joe Public has no clue about what has and hasn't been checked - but different certs include different amounts of validation. They aren't all the same.
Do you consider Aussie Broadband, JB Hi-Fi, and Target as lacking self respect since they use Let's Encrypt certs? And Amazon AU, Anaconda, Cashrewards, DoorDash, and Kogan for using lowly Domain Validation certs?
this really doesn't hold a candle to the east digital deals. local stock tax i guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Agree need to be cheaper
East Digital sells hard drives as “New” stock (apparently OEM drives). No real issues with their warranty, the drives themselves, or the packaging. But the fact they consistently sell 4+ year old drives as new stock seems to cast a lot of doubt.
At least these Pongobyte drives are a newer model and clearly labelled as ‘recertfied’, these no ambiguity about what is being sold in this deal.
The Bitdefender issue is a known one and we were hoping we had this sorted some time ago. The website is safe to browse though, the security certificate is indeed the one mentioned by one of you here (thank you @matey and the others who checked on our behalf).
Yes, your guess. That guess is what you're using to imply that the site and seller is up to dodgy, likely illegal activities. You should have a much stronger basis for likely defamatory statements than a guess.
See, at least I have a guess. You just keep repeating you don't like my guess, still, you can't even have a guess… what a shame
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrlXPjKUJLw
Repeating?
We've been selling these drives for a couple of years now with about 700 units sold so far, and have had no such complaints (ie malware) from our customers.
The supplier we work with is part of this organization https://circulardrives.org/members/ and we have had no reason so far to doubt the authenticity of the hard drives they supply.
We can only suggest you try one these drives, if you're not fully satisfied we are happy to provide a hassle free refund.
They likely just purchased them in wholesale quantities, to resell at retail prices, like most businesses, no?
If you're that concerned, reflash the firmware when you recieve it.
where are all the reputable stores, missing out on the opportunity to buy legit drives for cheaper
They're reselling new, unused goods that don't require refurbishment. Selling refurbished goods would detract from their new products and create competition within themselves. Basic business sense really.
You don't see David Jones selling second hand clothes that have been washed and repaired to be like new do you?
and only the random sole trader with a dodgy website jumps on an opportunity to resell factory recertified drives?
Of course not.
where are all the reputable stores
I know of Three in QLD; MegaBuy, HarrisTechnology, and Metrocom.
Two in NSW; Pongobyte and EastDigital (Trading as au_2023)
And Digimatrix is in Melbourne, I believe.
Most offer free shipping though, so you should be set, regardless.
missing out on the opportunity to buy legit drives for cheaper, "like most businesses, no?"
I genuinely don't think they're missing out; their stock numbers change fairly predictably.
It's just that they're just not marking down as low as Pongobyte can (with the exception of EastDigital), because he's a smaller business (less overheads).
have a cup of grow the flip up, champ
I'm not sure what this means in this context I'm sorry; can you elaborate\clarify?
@MasterScythe: EastDigital is HK based, not in NSW?
But Metrocom is a great example! They often clearly state the drives are used, which most of these drives likely are. Yes, factory recertified / repaired drives do exist, and they come with a short manufacturer warranty. Maybe these drives were like that at some point, maybe not. Maybe these were recertified drives then sat in servers for years. Maybe not.
If reselling factory recertified drives to retail customers were actually a thing, not only randos would sell them. UMart, Scorptec, MSY, Mwave would all join in. Yet, none of them touch these with a 10-foot pole.
If you knowingly want to trust the random internet sole trader without a storefront to give you equipment you want to rely on for years, that's your problem. If all these concerns I mentioned don't even cross your mind, I'm very worried about you.
One of the thousands of fun stories with factory recertified drives: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1dvyboi/just_b…
@glade90: Au_2023 is EastDigitals Sydney Warehouse. I was careful to explain what trading name to use. They ship from and offer support from Sydney.
What makes those businesses I listed 'randos', and ones that have previously gone into recievership (msy, now bought by umart) not? None are less than 10 years trading.
Why use MSY, who were fined massively for illegal business as an example?
Is pongobytes 15 years in business not enough?
Of that list, only EastDigital doesnt have a storefront, I believe; but several are by appointment (pretty normal in the boutique space).
Besides, lots of IT companies dont have storefronts. Microsoft, google, amazon; all huge.
UMart, Scorptec, MSY, Mwave
Bad examples of storefronts being of value; Umart and MSY were both literal holes in the side of warehouses you handed a number to for almost a decade before getting a storefront. 2001-2008 Umart felt like a drug deal.
But moving on from that;
Ive worked for 2 of that list. And wholesaling refurbished drives is 100% an option for them; but their reputations are as chain-retailers. They get more than 20 points per new HDD, and stock isnt stagnant.
Its simple business training; you dont offer a 10 point option when you are near certain of a 20 point sale.
You can consider the 'why' akin to why a supermarket moves damaged goods to clearance centres; selling you 10c misprinted food would step on the toes of their primary sales.
Regardless, ive bought refurbished from MWave before; they dont advertise them normally but you can absolutely custom order them. I got a tray of 32 not 3 years ago for a client. (Still running happily in a 1:1 pair of redundant servers, in RaidZ3 arrays)
If all these concerns I mentioned don't even cross your mind, I'm very worried about you.
Of course they do, thats part of the profession, weighing up supply chain is an important step.
Luckily the circular drive initiative is well proven.
But stress not, ive now worked in a data management role for nearly 20 years, you dont need to worry about me, my petabytes are safe.
And yes, you'll see me on the DataHoarder sub, and in the ZFS Dev mailing lists; ive seen and heard plenty over my career/passion.
Hmm, this could be Gerry Harvey setting up a shell company to target the Ozbargain community
To be honest after all the positives around east digital and including my recent experience I only would go with east digital for large size drives these days.
The odd thing about all the negative comments about this dealer and the positive comments about East Digital is that ED uses a generic, third party platform, Shopify, for their selling site. Whilst I've no doubt that ED is fine, Shopify has a well deserved reputation for being the home of many a dodgy, fly by night operation https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55420445
Absolutely was a risk the first time.
Its a blank template site even!
But the platform isnt the problem, the seller is; and in this case, they turned out legit.
Over a dozen orders from it now, all legitimate.
To be totally clear, I'm in no way saying that ED are dodgy, far from it. It's just that one side gets a false positive from a security app and the other is using a platform with 20%+ of fraudulent sellers. If one were to pick a dodgy seller based purely on probability then it would not be OP. But many seem to forget the likelihood that neither are dodgy, certainly going by reports.
You could go for Seagate Expansion 14TB Hard Drive External HDD from Newegg, will cost you around $355 right now for new
Off topic but has anyone been able to get a PayPal friends and family discount from East Digital lately? Ive emailed twice over the last few months and they havent been able to give me a better price contrary to what I've seen here on OzB.
Nope,simliar experience. I even emailed Yankee directly.
They're cheaper on their AU site than on their Ebay Store; I think they stopped doing that and just knocked the prices lower.
Products still arrive on time and packaged like a tank; last delivery was a week ago.
Would this be OK for Synology RAID setup hosting media files (Plex), or too risky given they are already used? (ie decreased lifespan, prone to failure? - I don't have experience buying used drives)
This is the perfect use case for such a drive. Plex media is not critical.
![[Recertified] Seagate Exos X22 14TB 3.5" SATA HDD Factory Recertifie $219 Delivered + Surcharge @ Pongobyte Computers](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/95/867595.jpg?h=1b81c743)
Bitdefender is showing a "Dangerous page blocked for your protection" warning when trying to visit your site, not a great sign…