Buying hard disks online - inadequate packaging

[Dark Black]

Irony

One of the disks from Scan has turned out to be duff...

It's getting RMA'd.

It would be ironic if the badly packed disks from Amazon actually worked perfectly...

*sigh*

[Platypus]

HDD's ... how quaint ;-)

[yasockie]

In the past I also used to rely on on hardware solution such as HW RAID controller.
Nowadays I tend to use software solutions such as ZFS or Windows Storage spaces, especially for SoHo (and my own use). The performance hit is minimal or none (in case of mirroring) and the convenience and flexibility outweighs any cons for me.
If one of those drives fail, you can recover data on another Windows computer. With hardware RAID controllers this was not always possible without the original HW controller.

[VectraMan]

WTS. When I first setup RAID 1 I bought two identical drives, thinking that's what I had to do. Afterwards I realised that was silly, especially as RAID1 means they're doing identical work. Fortunately they didn't fail at the same time, but a few months apart, but now I have two completely different drives.

[Dark Black]

Since you seem to be buying a pair of those, consider getting them from different manufacturers, or at least a different batch (from different retailers). Depending on how you set them up, they won't, hopefully, both fail at the exact same moment.
Very recently I had an HDD on my daily backup die and SSD with projects die at the same time.
Fortunately I had backups at an offsite location and all my pr0n / projects were recovered successfully

Indeed, good advice.. I remembered about that after I'd ordered them (duh) - that is exactly what I did with the original 500gb Seagates.

Done now, in fact arrived today and in the process of resyncing the first of them. I do have a decent multiple backup plan so hopefully there won't be a future problem...

Full marks to Scan, drives arrived mummified in bubblewrap.. what a contrast to Amazon.

[yasockie]

Since you seem to be buying a pair of those, consider getting them from different manufacturers, or at least a different batch (from different retailers). Depending on how you set them up, they won't, hopefully, both fail at the exact same moment.
Very recently I had an HDD on my daily backup die and SSD with projects die at the same time.
Fortunately I had backups at an offsite location and all my pr0n / projects were recovered successfully

[Dark Black]

Not the physical marks on the disk, but the last drive I bought had the same kind of packaging.

eBuyer I think it was.

I think the fact there were two disks banging about into each other made it worse.. didn't give a good impression - even a jiffy bag would have been better.

Anyway, ordered two more from Scan today (should be here tomorrow) and the others are getting picked up tomorrow.

Fingers crossed the Scan ones are better packed.

[TheFaQQer]

eBuyer generally do a box with shredded paper in it I think.
They need a slightly larger box so that they can also put in the flyers for new kitchens, as that's obviously what people buying components are after.

Yep - it was dabs

[Ticktock]

Not the physical marks on the disk, but the last drive I bought had the same kind of packaging.

eBuyer I think it was.

eBuyer generally do a box with shredded paper in it I think.
They need a slightly larger box so that they can also put in the flyers for new kitchens, as that's obviously what people buying components are after.

[TheFaQQer]

Anyone else experienced this?

Not the physical marks on the disk, but the last drive I bought had the same kind of packaging.

eBuyer I think it was.

[Dark Black]

As and when I by platter HDDs I usually by OEM drives, so no nice box and variable packaging.

I'm uncertain though exactly what damage you think the drives are likely to have taken that better packaging would have avoided, other than physical damage to the exterior of the drives themselves?
Damage to the platters / heads is very unlikely when unpowered, and unlikely to have been avoided by having a bit of foam around them.

I know what you're saying about platter damage being unlikely these days but I still tend to treat HDDs as carefully as I can - just don't want to risk it - there's visible scuffing to the outside of the drives including the circuit boards.. doesn't seem a good place to start...

+1. If anything Scan always goes utterly OTT with bubble wrap but I've never had a problem with a disk from them.

Plus they give me free delivery....

Thanks for that, forgot about Scan - putting an order in now.

[eek]

I purchase mine from Scan and they have all come well packaged and padded. Highly recommended.

+1. If anything Scan always goes utterly OTT with bubble wrap but I've never had a problem with a disk from them.

Plus they give me free delivery....

[Ticktock]

As and when I by platter HDDs I usually by OEM drives, so no nice box and variable packaging.

I'm uncertain though exactly what damage you think the drives are likely to have taken that better packaging would have avoided, other than physical damage to the exterior of the drives themselves?
Damage to the platters / heads is very unlikely when unpowered, and unlikely to have been avoided by having a bit of foam around them.

[Scruff]

Needed to increase the capacity of my NAS so ordered a pair of bigger drives from a well known online shop.

The drives arrived today and I was shocked (and annoyed) to find that the packaging amounted to the type of cardboard wrapper usually used to ship books or dvds. Not a piece of foam or other shock protection in sight.

There are visible marks on both the wrappers and the disks themselves where they've been knocking against each other.

Anyone else experienced this?

I've sent them back for a refund as I wouldn't trust them to hold data now.

Not impressed.

I purchase mine from Scan and they have all come well packaged and padded. Highly recommended.

[Dark Black]

Needed to increase the capacity of my NAS so ordered a pair of bigger drives from a well known online shop.

The drives arrived today and I was shocked (and annoyed) to find that the packaging amounted to the type of cardboard wrapper usually used to ship books or dvds. Not a piece of foam or other shock protection in sight.

There are visible marks on both the wrappers and the disks themselves where they've been knocking against each other.

Anyone else experienced this?

I've sent them back for a refund as I wouldn't trust them to hold data now.

Not impressed.