Hard drives by mail?

[AtlantaBob]

Hi all, just curious for your experiences. I need a new external hard drive for backups. My first thought is NewEgg....

However, one HDD that I ordered from them went bad soon after I got it, and the last thing I ordered from them (digital picture frame for Mom for Mother's Day) looked like it had been beaten to hell by UPS before it arrived.

Is anyone else antsy about ordering a hard disk from NewEgg or other online vendors? Or did I just get unlucky in my previous HDD purchase? How much damage can a HDD take when packed in the box and shipped? Or would you pay the premium to buy at a local store (although, I'm not sure that those are treated any better in shipment either)!

On a related note, I've been crazy busy and never replaced the 300 GB PATA external HDD (it's a Segate, bought about 2.5 years ago now). Anyone think I'd have any trouble getting them to give me warranty protection, or whether it'd even be worth getting replaced? And would I get another PATA or an SATA HDD?

Again, thanks!

 

[Mundos]

Unless you're buying your hd from the factory, its been shipped all over the world anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it, that's what the warranty is for. I own a computer store...all our stock comes with ups, so its the same thing...and places like newegg generally do a good packing job to protect the gear.

 

[AtlantaBob]

That's sorta what I figure... I just wanted to hear it from a couple of other folks so I felt better about it.

And I love the Egg, but damn did they do a crappy job of packing that picture frame. A little bit of butcher paper for padding (in an enormously oversized box)... and that was it!

For the record, though, the one time I've had to use their customer support (to replace a printer that UPS killed during shipping), they were awesome! I gripe enough about bad customer service that I should acknowledge Newegg when they get it right!

 

[brblx]

i would advise to buy retail [packaged] HDD's, they usually are suspended inside their own box pretty efficiently. so if all you get inside the ups box is one of those little air cushions, you still needn't worry too much. OEM's need to be packed a lot better.

and as soon as the bulk shipment of drives gets split up at a retail warehouse, they get chucked into totes, slammed around and eventually stacked on the shelf where some kid's probably gonna knock it on the floor. you're not gaining any peace of mind that way.

i've bought all my HDD's online and had one failure (a ~8gb WD years ago).

 

[AtlantaBob]

Darn double post. For some reason it looked like it didn't post. Darn tabbed internet browsing....

brblx, Thanks for the comments....

 

[nickbits]

I'm not a fan of how newegg packages their OEM drives (or at least when I got mine), it wsa just a loose drive with styrofoam pellets in the box. The drive started clicking after about a week and I had to return it.

 

[M0RPH]

Hard drives these days are not as fragile as people think. I've gotten 2 drives from Newegg recently and while the packaging was not great (there was bubble wrap around the drive with peanuts surrounding that), it was good enough that the drive is not gonna be damaged unless someone decides to hurl the box at a wall or something.

99% of the hard drives that go bad were gonna go bad anyways. Because they had some defect from the factory, not because of damage in shipping. I think there are a lot of bad drives coming out of the factory nowadays because they are really pushing the limits of their manufacturing, with bigger and bigger drives and ever-increasing platter densities.

 

[0roo0roo]

even retail drives get tossed around during shipment, never mind by retail workers before they hit theshelf, at minimum wage you get minimum care..believe me. drives are not delicate when off. they are also well padded enough to survive ups quite easily. drive failure is random, and more common than you'd like to think, so anecdotal evidence of this drive failed after xyz tends to be simple coincidence. same thing for people who claim xyz brand fails them. no one except google like companies buy enough drives over a short enough period to really have a good sample size. and the google drive study only showed that drives suck at life in general anyways. never trust. but yes the initial period is where the deaths also cluster, drives that were defective on birth tend to fail within a short time, then drives that survive that last maybe 2-3 years of good running, then after that the rate of failures goes up per year at a much faster rate again.