http://www.dealhack.com/archives/200...vd_burner.html

I am leery of refurbished units but the free HP blanks make the deal tempting. What do you experts think as I am rather new to the DVD burning scene?

I would pass.

Yeah, I'm not very fond of refurbs either. That and I just don't care for HP media (their manufacturers).

Do NOT buy that drive. There is a recall out on it. It's a defective model.

I repeat, that drive has been recalled by Pioneer. Do not buy it. The drive would only be good if you were buying it directly from Pioneer and they had refurbished/fixed it at the factory. Geeks sells junk that they simply put back in the box.

One more time, there is an official recall of this drive from Pioneer. The drive is known to be defective. Do NOT buy this model, EVER.

To elaborate on the above: the issue with the drives is that old versions of the drive had a defective CD "mechanism" which would make the drive unable to read and/or write CDs. Models produced after a certain point were unaffected. If you can deal with that possibility....

I know affected internal drives could be returned to Pioneer for a repair/replacement. I do not know whether this applies to the external drives, nor do I know whether or not they will honor it in the situation of this "refurbished" drive, or if they even still honor it period.

[On a side note: I think early drives also had an issue with general failures. But again, this is just early drives.]

I have no problem with refurbished item but $40 price tag makes it un-attractive deal.

No, it never applies to non-factory refurbs or used drives, which is why this should be avoided. Unlike the DVR-112, where you have a date range you can use to determine whether this might still work, with this it's a total crapshoot. Like I said and made quite plain, DO NOT BUY. PERIOD. Sometimes it's that simple.