What's new

Poor packaging of new HDD

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

SNB_UK

Occasional Visitor
Ordered a Seagate 8TB last week, arrived yesterday double boxed, but no foam, shipping clamshell or even bubble wrap. Just a plain brown cardboard box in a slightly larger box. It didn't rattle. It was sealed in a anti stat bag. I unwrapped it and plugged it in. Did a quick format and proceeded to copy data from 2 x 4TB drives, left it overnight. Got back to it 20 hours later and found it had only copied 600GB. Ran Seatools on it, failed on DST. Passed SMART.

Can not understand what the company was thinking. What a waste.
I've requested a RMA.
 
Seagate drives have not instilled confidence in me for the last decade or so. Not used at all, by me personally. If a customer describes a dying drive, I guess Seagate and am right 90% of the time. That is not a good thing.
 
Who was the reseller that sold you the drive? (they're probably one to avoid if that's how they typically ship)

Was it OEM (bare) drive or Retail kit?
 
Reseller - OEM bare drive. It was a great price, but not so great as it was FUBARd during transit. It cost about 250 USD including shipping and sales tax. I don't know of any other manufacturer that makes 8TB drives at consumer type prices.
 
Reseller - OEM bare drive. It was a great price, but not so great as it was FUBARd during transit. It cost about 250 USD including shipping and sales tax. I don't know of any other manufacturer that makes 8TB drives at consumer type prices.

When price is too good. That is why. Not retail version. Too bad. Made in Singapore or Philippines?
 
Neither - Made in Thailand.
There isn't a huge choice of HDD makers these days, there has been a slow but steady consolidation of HDD manufacturers. Probably because they're not making enough money and the capital investment required is significant.

Most drives are not retail. Responsible retailers pack their products correctly, this one clearly didn't, unless the requirements for HDD in transit are less stringent with the latest drives and I've been living under a rock.
 
Ive bought OEM before and it came in a padded box divided into sections specially for hard drives and they all worked. Ive heard many resellers that use poor packaging such as a few popular US stores. Perhaps you should go to the store physically and buy the drive instead.
 
Item was damaged in transit or defective unit? Always perform diagnostic tests on HDD after opening the package and BEFORE installation.
 
I don't know if it was a defective unit or damaged in transit.
It started doing repetitive clicking noises - reseeking ? after 600GB.

Due to the way it was packaged, I'd give the manufacturer the benefit of the doubt and buy again - from a different retailer.
 
If what you saw was a drive in a factory-sealed anti-static bag in a box, supported by two plastic end caps that held the drive away from the box sides, that's how a shipment of WD Reds from Amazon arrived for me.

I'm surprised Amazon didn't even throw a little padding into the box to keep the four drive boxes from bouncing around, but they didn't.

This looks like standard practice for OEM packaged drives.

Drives are fine and SMART reports ok.
 
Item was damaged in transit or defective unit? Always perform diagnostic tests on HDD after opening the package and BEFORE installation.

How do you test a hard drive before installing it? Sonic screw driver :-D?

On Amazon packaging, I've always had them throw the packing air bags in the larger boxes that the smaller HDD boxes came in with same described packaging. I did have one dead drive (computer wouldn't boot with it connected) out of 5 I ordered from Amazon, but they were all warehouse deals, so returns/damaged packaging. Not a huge surprise. The 5 are of course because I got a replacement from them.

It actually took more work from Amazon because I bought a 2 pack and it showed up as one 3TB Seagate and a 500GB Seagate 2.5" drive. WTF Amazon? At least they were good about exchanging it. And the exchanged drive is the one that was FUBAR'd. They then sent me a working one. Been all good since, all 4 drives have had at least 1000hrs of uptime at this point with no errors or issues (ones in the server probably 3000hrs, ones in my desktop about 1000).

I suspect it had nothing to do with the shipment packaging to me that lead to the drive being toast.
 
Not Amazon. No plastic end caps, just plain cardboard box, no concertinaed cardboard for shock absorption either.
Just waiting for the retailer to get back to me.
 
If what you saw was a drive in a factory-sealed anti-static bag in a box, supported by two plastic end caps that held the drive away from the box sides, that's how a shipment of WD Reds from Amazon arrived for me.

I'm surprised Amazon didn't even throw a little padding into the box to keep the four drive boxes from bouncing around, but they didn't.

This looks like standard practice for OEM packaged drives.

Drives are fine and SMART reports ok.

We get the same plastic holder packaging from our own distributors, so it's probably how WD ships OEM disks to the various suppliers.

Even HP uses the same type of packaging with their Enterprise SAS disks (we've ordered a few over the years for our customers). So, it seems to be common in the industry. I would assume the plastic is just soft enough to absorb a few Gs if the disk was dropped.
 
I've also seen corrugated card board used as a shock absorber, but nothing was used in this instance.

Most disappointed.
 
Last edited:
I've usually seen the plastic end caps as others have noted - I've also have Foam Inserts (uncommon) and I did get one shipment where the drives where shinkwraped to a cardboard carrier that did the same job as what the end-cap plastic things serve as...

Both for direct purchases and RMA's in the data center.

Never seen what OP reported - sounds like the drive got a good smack somewhere in route, and caused the failure on first use.
 
If what you saw was a drive in a factory-sealed anti-static bag in a box, supported by two plastic end caps that held the drive away from the box sides, that's how a shipment of WD Reds from Amazon arrived for me.

I'm surprised Amazon didn't even throw a little padding into the box to keep the four drive boxes from bouncing around, but they didn't.

This looks like standard practice for OEM packaged drives.

Drives are fine and SMART reports ok.

That is surprising, as normally Amazon overpacks the heck out of stuff... I did get an SSD once in a padded envelope, but it was a samsung retail drive so it was in the retail kit box, so no problems there.

Amazon is great to work with - esp. if one does get a bad drive - they're usually more than happy to ship first, return later...

I did get a mixed shipment one time, and they shipped the correct drive, and didn't want the misshiped item back (so double win!)
 
Guys - I never mentioned Amazon. I got the HD from a UK aggregator/discounter.
Any how, here's the packaging it came in.


uploading images


There is absolutely minimal protection, fine for a paperback, not platters of spinning rust capable of holding 8000GB ....
 
Last edited:
Similar threads

Latest threads

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top