Whirrr..click..click..grind..click..beep beep

[Elixer]

Hey folks, this is DJ IneedAhd, and today we are bringing you D.O.A's greatest hits!

Yep, in case you didn't guess, that is the sound of my new Hitachi HD.
Can't even detect the HD, with all that racket it is making.

Sad part is, newegg got it almost right in the shipping department, however, they only padded one side of the box with brown paper. The other side had no protection.
The HD was in a smaller white box with some bubble wrap around it, but it still could move around in that box as well.

They really need to fix this lack of quality control in the packing department.

 

[faxon]

You should see what happens when you hit a drive with a sledgehammer xD. We keep one in service at frys cause doing so can shatter the platters inside xD

 

[Elixer]

What really sucks is, that the cheapest shipping option I can find is almost $10 w/insurance|proof of delivery.

Bah, there goes that "deal".

 

[hal2kilo]

Hey folks, this is DJ IneedAhd, and today we are bringing you D.O.A's greatest hits!

Yep, in case you didn't guess, that is the sound of my new Hitachi HD.
Can't even detect the HD, with all that racket it is making.

Sad part is, newegg got it almost right in the shipping department, however, they only padded one side of the box with brown paper. The other side had no protection.
The HD was in a smaller white box with some bubble wrap around it, but it still could move around in that box as well.

They really need to fix this lack of quality control in the packing department.

Bought 2- 2.5 inch notebook drives with basic shipping from New Egg in the last 6 months with no problems. Must be luck of the draw.

 

[WildW]

The last few hard disks I've bought have arrived encased in a sphere of bubble-wrap. With the last one I watched the delivery guy drop it just before he got to my front door too. Still working fine but not a nice thing to have to see :/

 

[RonniJamesDiode]

Just got a WD Black drive from Newegg, packed very well in bubble wrap. No complaints, other than it isn't an SSD.

 

[C1]

Dropping a 2.5" bubble wrapped 500Gb HDD is one thing, but dropping a poorly wrapped 2TB 3.5" drive is surely another thing.

 

[86waterpumper]

stupid..Surely these companies deal with more returns than they save money. I mean a foam drive cradle can't cost what 10 cents if bought in quantity? Is it even higher than bubble wrap? I agree it does NOT give you a warm fuzzy feeling to see your drive come in packed ghetto!!!

Recently I got a 500gb f3 from superbiiz, I ended up seeing horrible tale of their shipping after I ordered. So I got a 1tb drive AND PAID MORE to get it from compuplus hoping they would pack it properly based on a resellerrating review. The superbiiz drive came with the correct sized box, dense foam cradle, 1 on each side, and the 1tb came in thrown in a box with a couple layers of bubble wrap.. what a joke. In the end it did me no good at all seems luck of the draw as was said.

I have seen pics of amazon packing. At least with mine the box was not huge. I have seen some where the drive had a good foot or 2 to achieve nice acceleration before it slammed into the side . Amazon lately will always have the cheapest price, but I'd pay up to 10 or 15 bucks more to have the thing wrapped right. Rebate is not worth alot when you've lost data.

 

[COPOHawk]

Most everything i order from newegg is well packed lately.

The 5 Samsung 2 TB F4 drivers I ordered all arrived in their own plastic shells...surrounded by bubble wrap, then each placed inside a small white cardboard box...packaged in a large box with paper filler.

No complaints.

 

[Concillian]

Buy your drives from Dell. Yes they're more expensive.

But drives that go to large suppliers are generally better drives.

You sell high failure rate drives to someone who distributes to newegg, Fry's, etc... and you get higher rates of returns from a bunch of individual people who buy one drive every few years and you really don't care too much if they swear off your brand forever. High rate of Failure cost relatively little here.

You sell high failure rate drives to Dell or Compaq, who buys hundreds of thousands of drives, they know your exact failure rate to two decimal points and compare that to their three other suppliers and buy tens of thousands of more drives from the proven reliable vendors who don't cost them extra money in tech. support and customer service. High rate of failure can kill shipping volumes, marketshare and price negotiation here. The drive companies care more about these larger customers due to the potential impact on the bottom line.

You want the lowest chance of getting a bum drive, buy from someone who puts those drives into servers and those servers into locations where theres a thousand in a building. Because those are the customers the drive companies give the lowest risk drives to.

All drive models have a certain failure rate, and you can never eliminate your chances of getting a bum drive. However, you can reduce the likelihood. A failure is a minor inconvenience if it's DOA. It's a potential disaster if it happens 3 month after it's been installed.

I'm a cheap bastard when it comes to memory, CPU, mobo, etc... but storage is something I don't mess around with. 3x copies of everything and my drives come from Dell.

 

[Tsavo]

Buy your drives from Dell. Yes they're more expensive.

But drives that go to large suppliers are generally better drives.

You sell high failure rate drives to someone who distributes to newegg, Fry's, etc... and you get higher rates of returns from a bunch of individual people who buy one drive every few years and you really don't care too much if they swear off your brand forever. High rate of Failure cost relatively little here.

You sell high failure rate drives to Dell or Compaq, who buys hundreds of thousands of drives, they know your exact failure rate to two decimal points and compare that to their three other suppliers and buy tens of thousands of more drives from the proven reliable vendors who don't cost them extra money in tech. support and customer service. High rate of failure can kill shipping volumes, marketshare and price negotiation here. The drive companies care more about these larger customers due to the potential impact on the bottom line.

You want the lowest chance of getting a bum drive, buy from someone who puts those drives into servers and those servers into locations where theres a thousand in a building. Because those are the customers the drive companies give the lowest risk drives to.

All drive models have a certain failure rate, and you can never eliminate your chances of getting a bum drive. However, you can reduce the likelihood. A failure is a minor inconvenience if it's DOA. It's a potential disaster if it happens 3 month after it's been installed.

I'm a cheap bastard when it comes to memory, CPU, mobo, etc... but storage is something I don't mess around with. 3x copies of everything and my drives come from Dell.

...rriiiiiiggggghhht.

 

[Concillian]

...rriiiiiiggggghhht.

Take it for what you will. I work in the hard drive industry and know it to be true. MFRs give more reliable stuff to the big boys and dump any garbage into the distribution channel.

Business to business pays the bills. The stuff that ends up at newegg and Fry's is a tiny fraction of total market and they don't really care about it too much. Given the options, it's the best place to send the high risk stuff.

Think about it from a business standpoint and you would come to the same conclusion.