Are replacement hard drives reliable?

[Lumia925]

hi,
one of my Seagate "Expansion" hard drives died within warranty, and after 3 long months, seagate mailed me a replacement drive today.
It seems to be working okay, but has the word "RECERTIFIED" engraved under it's plastic casing. That makes me feel that this isn't a new drive, it's a repaired drive.
I have 4 other drives, 2 Seagate, and 2 WD, all 1TB in size, and none have the word "recertified" on them, they are not very old, the oldest being a year and a half.
So, is this drive less reliable than these other hard drives which haven't failed?
Here's the SMART data of the replacement HDD I got :

Another question:, one of my other drives has a "Write error rate" of 10, HD Sentinel still says the health is 100% though, and the HDD passes the extended SMART test. is write error rate a critical attribute? Should I be worried about that drive? If you want I can send a screenshot of that drive's smart too.

 

[galactigus]

I've been told by a guy that repairs pc's that he's gotten 4 times the amount of seagate HDD's that come in dead vs WD I would trust the WD drives over the seagates.
Just use the seagate as a storage drive.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Lumia925,

Drives that are sent as replacements are most probably fine. The S.M.A.R.T results show that as well.
Regarding your other drive, I would say that it may be a good idea to back it up regularly. This indicates that there is either something wrong with the surface or the write/read heads. It may be a good idea to use another tool and see whether you will get similar results.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[fzabkar]

I tend not to trust recertified drives. AFAIK, the HDD manufacturers don't actually repair failed drives, except by swapping a PCB. Instead they merely retest them and ship them back out.

For example, if a drive were returned with a bad head, then this head would be disabled and the drive then recertified as a lower capacity model. I personally would feel very uncomfortable with a drive that had a history of internal problems.

That said, the SMART report suggests that the drive inside the enclosure may be a Samsung.