Hard drive failure rates after bad packing?

[GeezerMan]

We have a three used WD black enterprise hard drives shipped to us with improper packing. they used a priority mail padded envelope , and very little pink bubble wrap around the drives. nauseating..Two drives touching edge to edge. more nausea

they all test OK with the crystal disk quick test. Probably will send them back, but I might try the WD long term test.

Question. I have read that even if a drive shows OK upon receipt, improper packing can greatly decrease the lifespan, and the failure rate goes way up in the very near future.

What say you?

thanks

 

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

Hey there GeezerMan

What's the drives' model number? Which retailer did you use?
Bad packing and shipping can indeed cause quite a lot of trouble and put your data in danger.

Using WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool should show you if there's something wrong with the drives. I'd run both the quick and the extended tests and see if all three drives pass them. Then I'd check the raw values of the S.M.A.R.T. status again and see if there was an increase in one or more of the entries that may indicate a potential problem. If there's no such thing I wouldn't worry about the drives, though backups are always recommended.

Captain_WD.

 

[GeezerMan]

well thanks Capt. they are WD1003FBYX . They are out of warranty. we got them extremely cheap, being used drives, from a large PC parts recycler. One drive has passed the WD long term test.

even though they test ok now, I'm just wondering about decreased lifespan from improper packing.

 

[XavierMace]

Improperly packed drives CAN get damaged in shipping. I'm not aware of any guarantee that they will have their lifespan decreased. But if you're that worried about their lifespan, I'd recommend not buying out of warranty drives in the first place.

 

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

Those are actually WD RE4 drives and are quite old models, though pretty good.
Since they are second-hand I would strongly recommend a thorough diagnostic checks and detailed monitoring of their S.M.A.R.T. statuses and see if there are any signs of problems before trusting your data to them.
I would always recommend full backups when reusing storage drives.

Improper packaging can cause quite a lot of trouble but if there's something wrong it should be visible either in the tests or in the S.M.A.R.T. status.

Captain_WD.

 

[GeezerMan]

Improperly packed drives CAN get damaged in shipping. I'm not aware of any guarantee that they will have their lifespan decreased. But if you're that worried about their lifespan, I'd recommend not buying out of warranty drives in the first place.

well thanks for that friendly response., we all know improperly packed drives can arrive DOA.

there was quite a bit of chat in the recent past about failure rates going up, after the drive was in service, with bad packing. Newegg and amazon had some bad packing at one point.

my whole point of this thread was to ask about drives failing quicker due to packing problems. that's all

Why do I sometimes purchase these drives?
I've gotten some incredible bargains buying out of warranty drives. Like enterprise 2TB drives for 20.00, bought in bulk. For the most part, they were packed well.

I have some used WD 1TB drives I purchased out of warranty, that are still perfect after 5 years of my heavy use. They were packed well when I got them

 

[Charlie98]

Hard drives work fine until they don't... there is no way to predict future performance, assuming they check good initially. Rough handling can't be good, new or used, but there is no way, again, to predict future performance. If you don't like how they were shipped and you can send them back... I would do so.

 

[Elixer]

Hard drives work fine until they don't... there is no way to predict future performance, assuming they check good initially. Rough handling can't be good, new or used, but there is no way, again, to predict future performance. If you don't like how they were shipped and you can send them back... I would do so.

Pretty much this, SMART isn't foolproof, there have been many drives that died before tripping ANY SMART attributes.

While SMART can be a indicator of a specific snapshot of time, it by no way guarantees that the HD will be OK the next day.

I have a WD Red suffer this, one day, all is fine, the next, poof, gone, never a peep from SMART.

 

[Topweasel]

well thanks for that friendly response., we all know improperly packed drives can arrive DOA.

there was quite a bit of chat in the recent past about failure rates going up, after the drive was in service, with bad packing. Newegg and amazon had some bad packing at one point.

my whole point of this thread was to ask about drives failing quicker due to packing problems. that's all

Why do I sometimes purchase these drives?
I've gotten some incredible bargains buying out of warranty drives. Like enterprise 2TB drives for 20.00, bought in bulk. For the most part, they were packed well.

I have some used WD 1TB drives I purchased out of warranty, that are still perfect after 5 years of my heavy use. They were packed well when I got them

The Point Xavier was trying to make was that bad shipping can cause a drive to be DOA. Thats why 2008-2011 shipping of drives from Newegg was an issue and why there are so many 1star reviews on most OEM drives. Specially around the dates I mentioned. These are almost always DOA drives that died in shipping and not because the Manufacturer let a huge batch of bad drives out on the market.

But and his main point is. If the Hard drive lasted though shipping and works. Then I am not sure there is any real proof that being manhandled but still working will die any sooner that a HDD that was shipped inside a Serta Pillow. HDD's have very very very tight allowances and if anything knocked the drive out of those allowances you would know right away (DOA). Since that didn't happen the drives are probably on track for the same expected failure point as they would have been again inserted into a Serta pillow.

But his last point still stands. Minimizing damages and maximizing lifespan on a used hard drive out of warranty is going to be an unfruitful endeavor. The fact that you have two working HDD's but want to send them back for bad shipping on drives you got "dirt cheap" proves the point. You are needlessly wasting time and therefore money worrying about devices that should last several years, because these ones are much closer to end of life than a new drive would have been. You will never trust these drives or the next drives and the slightest hiccup with the system will mean that you go into immediate "is this drive dying" phase before looking at anything else and in the end you will probably swap these drives while they are still working because you will be super worried and sensitive that the next hiccup will be the drive and it will be too late.

It's like buying a beater car and then trying to return it because the tires where balder than you thought. When in reality it would be just about everything else you should be worrying about and getting better tires put on at the dealership is only going to remove one insignificant blame when an issue arises. It still might not last the winter.

 

[XavierMace]

^^

Exactly.

 

[GeezerMan]

It's not my first rodeo. It's not just about two or three drives that I just purchased. I've purchased PLENTY of used, out of warranty drives, over the past many years that are still rocking just fine. All backed up of course. I've saved plenty of dough doing this.

I've seen new drives fail, I've seen older drives fail. I back things up, so I don't lose sleep over it. I've had more failures from new drives I've purchased , than from used enterprise drives. Enterprise drives are designed for 24/7 use

This thread was started because I received three drives improperly packed. It's been a long time since I received improperly packed drives.

All three drives passed WD quick test and long test yesterday. One drive today failed quick test.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I once ordered four "Bare Drive" WD 1TB "Green" HDDs from frys.com.

They arrived, in a single thin padded envelope, just big enough for all four drives, laying flat, banging against each other. They shipped them in a Belgian waffle arrangement.

I was initially shocked and dismayed, but I proceeded to use them. One was DOA (although it could have been dead due to me pulling a SATA cable out from under a case strut, while the HDD was installed, and it may have put too much pressure on the drive cap, and damaged the internals.) The other three tested good, and a friend is still running his to this day.

I guess, I thought about it, and other than the scuff marks and dents on the outer housing, the drive are ramp-load, which means that they can withstand much higher-G shocks when non-operating. So I came to the conclusion that they were probably actually OK.

Though, I wouldn't personally ship drives like that.

I also bought some $10 80GB 7200RPM HDDs from Newegg's ebay store, and they arrived in a flat box, lined with bubble wrap, but all of the individual drives banging against each other. I don't know if it was coincidence or not, but two of the drives were standard 7200 drives, and both were DOA. The other three were mistaken product, Raptor 10000 RPM drives, and they tested fine. I figured, it's pretty-much pot luck if $10 refurb HDDs work or not, so I called it even, since I got the free upgrades to the Raptors.

Edit: This is the reason that I've been buying "retail box" Toshiba P300 1TB HDDs, when Newegg puts them on sale for $45. I much prefer "retail box" HDDs, for the extra padding.

 

[Elixer]

Depending on how much force (and which direction) and vibration HDs get, it can make things much worse.
I took a older HD, and it had the head parking feature, and I pounded on the side of it, just to see how much force it would take to dislodge the parked heads, and it wasn't that much.
The HDs that have heads sitting over the platters can also dig into the platter, the tolerances are very small.

I know before, both Seagate & WD wanted 3" of foam around a HD when shipping it back to them. Now, they seem to want the 'book end' type of plastic support for the HDs that get returned, and in fact, they will refuse to accept a HD that doesn't have any protection at all.
So, as a general rule, I would always refuse packages that didn't properly pack HDs.
The best packing of a HD that I have had was a foam type material that the HD was placed into.
The worst was newegg's a few years back.