Newb in Hard Drives Some ?'s

[Blu-Flames]

Hey,
Whats the difference between OEM hard drives and retail?
Do both OEM and Retail come with SATA cables and the other powercable?
What good hard drives are beter OEM or Retail?
Thanks

[eth00]

They are the same physical drive.

OEM is meant for an Original Equipment Manufactuer, essentially somebody who builds systems. They come bare-drive with nothing else, so you don't get any cable, screws, or any of the fancy stuff. The warranty may also be different on OEM vs Retail drives, this is more common with CPUs.

SATA cables are pretty cheap, if thats the only thing you need a retail drive they are pretty cheap online. If you need the power adapter that also is pretty cheap purchased online.

[setekh]

the only thing I'd be concerned about is warranty (some brands have a rather limited OEM warranty policy). other than that, its a few more bucks you can save ;)

[oplin]

Yup pretty much warrenty and cables, disks and manuals you don't get. The packaging can be iffy but most reputable dealers ship just fine, some people have a problem with newegg's shipping methods though i personally never had a problem with the drives but they aren't packaged the best. CDW packages drives nicely. Anyway if you're going lower end warrenty probably shouldn't matter as much as replacing it in a year will probably be less of a hassle than shipping the drive out. Seagate and Western Digital are offering 3 or 5 year warrenties on their drives i would definitally pay the extra few bucks for warrenty but i think Seagates OEM drives come with 5 year warrenties on them.

[protias]

Yup pretty much warrenty and cables, disks and manuals you don't get. The packaging can be iffy but most reputable dealers ship just fine, some people have a problem with newegg's shipping methods though i personally never had a problem with the drives but they aren't packaged the best. CDW packages drives nicely. Anyway if you're going lower end warrenty probably shouldn't matter as much as replacing it in a year will probably be less of a hassle than shipping the drive out. Seagate and Western Digital are offering 3 or 5 year warrenties on their drives i would definitally pay the extra few bucks for warrenty but i think Seagates OEM drives come with 5 year warrenties on them.
Every OEM drive I have purchased was just the drive, no cables, no nothing. That being said, I just purchased 6 drives from Newegg (and 2 more on the way), the 6 drives were package securely in a "drive carton" with each drive seperated from each other and bubble wrap around that. Retail drives are usually 1 year, OEMs are 3 years usually, unless you buy Seagate or WD RE (as well as the Raptor) drives, then it is 5 years.