If you bought a drive cheap, think twice before doing an RMA
I bought a couple of recertified 12TB enterprise drives from ServerPartDeals each a while back, which was roughly half of what the same drive costs now. One of them developed 57 reallocated sectors during normal use, so I sent it back for an RMA under the 2-year warranty.
The thing I was worried about ended up happening: they just refunded me. I got back exactly what I paid, $165, while the same drive currently sells for around double that. The refund doesn't come close to replacing the drive at today's prices. I did ask whether they could send an equivalent drive instead of a refund, but in the end they issued the refund.
So if you picked up a drive cheap when prices were low, and it isn't in seriously bad shape, it may be worth reconsidering an RMA. Weigh the refund you'd actually get against what a replacement costs today.
Depending on the numbers, keeping the drive in service (with good backups and monitoring) until it genuinely fails might make more sense than sending it back for a refund that won't replace it. Curious if others have run into the same thing with recertified drives and rising prices.
(English isn't my first language, so I used AI to help translate this. Apologies if anything reads a little oddly.)