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Is it a bad time to buy a hard drive?

CKent

CKent

Diamond Member
My 120gb backup drive died, so I surfed on over to Newegg to pick up a new one. I was thinking 750gb suits my needs fine and is a size at a good current price point, as the newer & bigger TB drives are costing the premium currently.

So I started reading reviews, and Jesus! DOA city. Doesn't even seem to be brand-related: Text 1, Text 2, Text 3

Is it something about this size of hard drive? Did all the manufacturers recently goof? Are truckers angry about gas prices deliberately hitting every pothole...? :laugh: Or should I just not worry about it?
 
Newegg isn't known for careful shipping of OEM drives, which is part of it.

I had to send back my first Samsung Spinpoint 500GB because it was DOA.
 
Is it a bad time to buy a hard drive?
Click to expand...

It's a bad time to buy if your current HDD has died with unrecovable data.

It's a good time to buy if you want GB/$, or bang-for-buck, or whatever benchmark you use.
 
I usually prefer to get my OEM HDDs from ZipZoomFly - they always ship in foam drive containers. Have gotten over 12 over the past years - never a problem.
 
Originally posted by: CKent
Is it something about this size of hard drive?
Click to expand...

Your 120G died. A bunch of people had much smaller Maxtors die. My 30G Deskstar far outlasted others before it finally bit the dust (and it wasn't one of the infamous Deathstar drives).

Originally posted by: OrooOroo
doa has always happened.
user reviews are self selected bunch.
Click to expand...

QFT. My 750G Spinpoint is still going strong, tho' it's only been about five months.

It's no different today than it was when your maximum supported disc size was 2G: backup the important shit. If you get a drive with a warranty, your odds of another dead drive drops quite a bit.

 
Remember this, angry or dissapointed people are TEN/10 times more likely to vent their frustration, then people with a good experience. So for every bad review you see, there's 10 people not making a review at all. DOA happens, there's quality control, but a 1-2% failure rate is acceptable and in fact normal.
 
EVERY HD I've ever bought from Newegg has been packed very well.
They have been enclosed in an anti-static bag, of course...
Wrapped in a good layer of bubble wrap...
Surrounded by plenty of packing peanuts.

I couldn't ask for better packing than that.

BTW, I've never had a DOA HD (or anything), from Newegg.
 
Happened to me few times in the many years that I am involved with computers that hardware came defunct.

Last example a year ago an Abit IP-35-E Mobo.

I had two options.

1. Run to the review Trash Abit and buy from another manufacturer because this Mobo condition means that all Abit Mobos are "BAD", I will never buy their ??Crap?? again. :thumbsdown:

2. Understand that a piece of hardware can be Bad, and do not internalize bad piece of Silicone and Plastic as a Challenge to my Ego and well Being. :thumbsup:

So I sent the IP-35 back and ask for another one.

And guess what? Not All Abit Mobos are bad because of one coincidence.

I am using the second Mobo for more than year. OC to 3GHz with stock HSF. and have NO problems what so ever.
 
Bang for the buck is definitely happening in the hdd storage market! Upgrading to what is affordable nowadays is going to give you tons more room.

I am pretty happy with the Samsung's I have purchased from newegg. They did come wrapped in bubble wrap in a box.
 
Bang for the buck you're always better off waiting another 6 months, but right now storage is cheaper than it's ever been in terms of $/mb. I bought my last harddrive when everyone was saying don't buy WD or Maxtor, Seagate had just announced a 5 year warranty so I'm pretty convinced that was the motive behind the hype. Guess what, my horrible WD harddrive has been going strong for almost 5 years now. Buy whatever is on sale, if it fails in the first 6 months you got a 1 in 1000 defect, odds are you won't get another one.
 
NewEgg has been great for me. From a quick count I've got 15 drives in the office spinning that came from NewEgg and have not had a DOA show up.

I've had great luck with every manufacturer but Western Digital has done right by me twice when things start failing or I believe they COULD be failing. Sitting on my desk now is a replacement drive from them for a drive that was running at 55c+/- and it was 2 years 8 months old. It took three working days for the new one to arrive and it was the current revision and not an older cheaper one. With that said I've seen drives from all manufacturers fail, get too noisy, or hot and most were old enough I didnt even want a replacement.

People seem so swear by the WD 640 GB AAKS but no personal experience with it. I've been impressed with their 250GB AAKS and YS drives though.
 
Thanks guys, maybe I'm just a bit paranoid. I've always bought from Newegg and never had a problem. But I went with ZZF this time, partly because of the recommendation and partly because they had a good price on a brand / size I had my eyes on.
 
I've been ordering lot of HDDs recently as they are dirt cheap, IDE as well as sata. Not "a lot" as in like 10, but I've bought maybe like 5 in the past year which is more then I normally buy. So far so good. I had one die within maybe a few months of operation so bought a new one to replace it but that's it. Think its really a luck thing. HDDs are rather solid when turned off, I've been told you could drop one on a cement floor and it will work fine (assuming you don't break the connector/board) not that I'd try it though.

 
Backup backup backup. Use Acronis for disk imaging (I use Acronis True Image Home 10) and just do a straight copy to other external drives for your data. Goddamn it's so easy. Then image your drive to your new one, keep your old one around, and start using it. Enjoy and if it fails, you can flip back to your old one. It couldn't be easier. Or could it? Yeah it could. But that's in the future, and not in the here and now!

Also, I hear good things about the 640GB WD drive, everyone seems to be raving about it. Saw a few benches too and it seems like a speed-demon. I got a Hitachi 500Gb for about the same price a few weeks back... a bit of buyers remorse! But it's a solid drive so far...
 
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