Harddrive Purchase?

[Tsaar]

Do you guys typically trust ordering HDD online? I always worry about the shipping.

Today I was in MC and even their HDD boxes seemed beat up also.

Is there anywhere "safe" to actually buy HDDs?

 

[fastman]

Newegg has always been very good on packaging.

If ordering an old school mechanical HD, I think they are good for 20 G's in drop tests and the current standard of SSD's are good for 100+ G's.

So unless the packaging is AFU when you get it, you should have no worries.

 

[zCypher]

Never had an issue ordering hard drives online. I'll only pick it up in-store if it's an unbeatable deal. Besides, it being in a store doesn't mean it hasn't already been mishandled.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I once ordered some "OEM"/"bare drive" HDs from Frys.com once. Never again. They shipped all four, in the SAME padded envelope, all banging against one another in transit. They had noticable dents and scratches. Amazingly, three out of the four worked. I'm still using one of them in my HTPC as the primary drive. (Although it once lost the second partition, somewhat mysteriously, some time after a re-install of Win7 64-bit on the primary partition.)

If I order HDs from Newegg, I try to order the max quantity (usually five), that way, they use an OEM shipment box to send them to me (with the foam cutouts for HDs to fit into.) I do the same with DVD drives. Only once have they failed to use the OEM box to send them to me.

ZipZoomFly sent me a WD 6400AAKS drive in a nice little "foam coffin", that protected it with 1.5-2" of foam on each side.

And when I ordered five drives from Dell one time during a sale, they shipped them in a "five-pack coffin", with 2" of foam around each drive as well.

Edit: This is primarily why I order retail-boxed drives only.

 

[Tsaar]

I am building my first computer in over three years, and ALL of my HDDs had been ordered online. The main reason for my OP was because I had seen lots of bad reviews on Amazon and Newegg about bad packaging.

Most of those complaints are 1-2 years old, so hopefully they have been fixed.