Just Received Enterprise Class Hard Drives. . . Packaged Poorly

Hurin

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 8, 2003
Messages
2,410
Hi All,

Newegg has been a lot better about shipping hard drives lately. Except for this latest case, I've always received them in their own individual little boxes surrounded by a thick bubble-envelope within that form-fitting box.

Yet. . . today, I received three WD RE 2TB drives from Newegg, and they're all just in the bubble envelope in one large box which came all the way across the country. It looks like they wanted to fit them in a smaller box so they removed the individual smaller ones.

If this were just for myself, I wouldn't sweat it. But it's for a server. I'd have a hard time sending them back when they could be fine. Yet I like to know that my server components at work have never been mistreated.

So. . . show of hands. . . would you use 'em? Send them back? How much testing would you need to do with them before you'd fully trust them? I figure I could put them in a RAID array and fully initialize it. . . and then goof around with it for a day.

--H
 
I don't think I would be fine with that kind of packaging even if they were for personal use. This sounds like a really lazy way to ship and given the extra cost for server harddrives I would expect better protections. I would ask for an RMA on this and I hope you documented how they were packaged.
 
Here's how they were packed. . .

IMG_1213-e1426112617800.jpg


Still trying to talk myself into keeping them. I don't even like to send back bad food. So it's against my nature to send these back on principle without confirming there's a problem. =)

And since they'd still be sealed, some other schmo would probably just get them and be none the wiser to their potentially trouble provenance.

Having said that, gonna sleep on it and probably return them tomorrow.
 
I personally would be fine with how they were packed. They do have the thick air pocket bubble wrap stuff around them.

If you are hesitant though, I would call them up and ask to exchange
 
Eh, I have seen far worse. I would be ok with them. But use your judgment.
 
the packing looks fine to me. Hard drives are pretty durable when not plugged in and I think it would take a lot to damage anything packed like that.
 
Thats not really as bad as your making it out to be. Its not like there's no bubble rap.
 
i was expecting worse too. as long as the drives werent banging around against each other, those air pockets look big enough to protect the drives in transit. Judging by that picture alone, I would use those drives and not think twice.
 
Thanks guys. That's actually what I was hoping to hear. I'll test them thoroughly and use them. =)
 
Incidentally, the less well-packed ones shipped out of Illinois along with some thermal paste. Normally they would ship out of CA. When they ship out of CA, they come like this. . .

FullSizeRender.jpg


. . . and then those of course are in a larger outer box.

But, again, thanks for putting my mind more at ease. I'll give 'em a fair shot. ;)
 
Those air pockets are a lot more cushioning than they look.

Modern drives are designed to withstand 250-300G non-op shock, and that's about a 3 foot drop of a bare drive onto a solid floor.

That packaging is fine.
 
Really, OP, really? That packaging is fine. R/W head is parked in those drives, and as long as that is the case + they're powered off that packaging is more than sufficient. I would go so much as to say that's quite a bit better than the retail packaging where they slip a witty piece of plastic (or recycled paperboard) on both ends of the HDD and that's it.

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Really, OP, really? That packaging is fine. R/W head is parked in those drives, and as long as that is the case + they're powered off that packaging is more than sufficient. I would go so much as to say that's quite a bit better than the retail packaging where they slip a witty piece of plastic (or recycled paperboard) on both ends of the HDD and that's it.

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Meh, we all have our hang-ups and momentary irrational moments. I just remember all the posts back in the day when all newegg did was wrap them in bubblewrap. There were people raising hell and blaming all sorts of DOA issues on it. I always had good luck though. When I saw a difference between how they've been doing it recently and what I received, it brought back those memories of all those complaints about what was essentially the same thing. So I guess I just needed to go back to thinking all those folks were crazy. ;)

The thread was kinda already resolved and dead. -1 for feeling the need to perpetuate it. :D

Edit: I know it's not rational, but it also bothered me how the drives were put in the box at an angle or else they would not fit. Together with softened up and creased box, the whole thing just screamed "not optimal" to me. And since it's a server. . .
 
Those air-pocket sleeves are significantly better than the random bubble wrap that I used to see from newegg in the old days. While large-bubble bubble-wrap theoretically could be as good as these sleeves, in practice the packers did a poor job, often leaving edges or corners of the HDDs unprotected by bubble-wrap. But the sleeves are more difficult for the packers to mess up, so in practice they are better than the old bubble-wrap.
 
Mind you, most hard drive failures are DOA so they'll either be fine or not fine the moment you install them. So long as you test them prior to sending the server off somewhere they should be good. Most of those DOA's were because of the piss poor packaging and the delivery service. Last I heard it was something like 20% of all HDD's were DOA because of it, hence the recent packaging trends.

Really, nothing can prevent FedEx and UPS guys from being dicks and trying to save fractions of a second per package.

I see no problem to be honest. Coming from a time when I ordered 3 x 640GB OEM WD Blue's from Newegg in the "bad era" of 2009 they were just taped with that thin bubble wrap. Still working like champs to this day.
 
Plug them in and test with badblocks. If they pass and SMART is at least 90% health or better keep them, if not rma them. I bought some similar drives from newegg and did what I wrote, all 10 drives have been running fine since. Though one drive originally started at 85% health and during testing dropped down to less than 70%, it was one of the ones that got sent back.
 
You want worse?

I pre-ordered 10 of the new Seagate 8TB drives from B&H Photo Video, having caught the $249 price back in January. They just threw them bare (nothing but anti-static bags) in a box with bubble wrap top and bottom (no sides). These were literally piled like loose bricks.

BH%20packaging_zpscfptrzzp.jpg


The box itself got roughed up a bit by UPS too (you can see the box is a bit dented and there's a hole in the upper left of the picture), but honestly I'm not expecting the shipper to compensate for bad packaging.

I stuck them in my ZFS server in their own 10 drive RAID-Z2 pool and started copying data over just to see. 3 of the drives were dead within the first few minutes; another drive went offline with a mechanical failure within the first hour.

Eventually I put the remaining 6 into their own pool and those have been solid upon retesting but I'm really thinking about whether their lifespan has been shaved (these do have a 3 year warranty).

And for all the speculative chatter about SMR drives their initial performance has been really good even off of a SAS expander. Of course, they're far from full or needing rewrites of any kind.

Needless to say, I'm working with B&H to get replacements for at least the 4 drives, but who knows how those will be sent. :rolleyes:
 
You want worse?

I pre-ordered 10 of the new Seagate 8TB drives from B&H Photo Video, having caught the $249 price back in January. They just threw them bare (nothing but anti-static bags) in a box with bubble wrap top and bottom (no sides). These were literally piled like loose bricks.

BH%20packaging_zpscfptrzzp.jpg


The box itself got roughed up a bit by UPS too (you can see the box is a bit dented and there's a hole in the upper left of the picture), but honestly I'm not expecting the shipper to compensate for bad packaging.

I stuck them in my ZFS server in their own 10 drive RAID-Z2 pool and started copying data over just to see. 3 of the drives were dead within the first few minutes; another drive went offline with a mechanical failure within the first hour.

Eventually I put the remaining 6 into their own pool and those have been solid upon retesting but I'm really thinking about whether their lifespan has been shaved (these do have a 3 year warranty).

And for all the speculative chatter about SMR drives their initial performance has been really good even off of a SAS expander. Of course, they're far from full or needing rewrites of any kind.

Needless to say, I'm working with B&H to get replacements for at least the 4 drives, but who knows how those will be sent. :rolleyes:

Why would you not refuse that package? Or even if you had to accept it, I would have been on the phone demanding a refund/reshipment. I wouldn't even have opened them or powered them on. B&H should have corrected that before you ever used them.
 
Why would you not refuse that package? Or even if you had to accept it, I would have been on the phone demanding a refund/reshipment. I wouldn't even have opened them or powered them on. B&H should have corrected that before you ever used them.

B&H is correcting it, and in the interim I'm getting time to play with the few drives that are working to see how SMR really behaves. There's been a noticeable write slowdown now that the pool is >25% full which correlates with other telemetry I've seen elsewhere.
 
I've got a 3TB WD green with the top dented on a side due to poor packaging, another drive's corner smashed into it. It works fine though, and the retailer refused to take it back, so I've banned them and made them some bad publicity on the web.
 
I've got a 3TB WD green with the top dented on a side due to poor packaging, another drive's corner smashed into it. It works fine though, and the retailer refused to take it back, so I've banned them and made them some bad publicity on the web.
Good for you!
 
I'm anal when it comes to hard drive packaging and insist that the retailer use a manufacturer approved shipping carton with that carton being shipped inside another larger, well-padded carton.

One retailer that I've found to pack very well is SCSI4ME. I ordered some Seagate Constellation ES 1TB drives from them many years ago and not only were they in the SeaShells, but the Seashells themselves were inserted into a piece of solid foam packaging (the type multiple drives should be shipped in). The holes were a bit too small for the SeaShells and the foam was firm but still compressible and held the drives VERY securely. Those drives still work fine today...;)
 
I'm anal when it comes to hard drive packaging and insist that the retailer use a manufacturer approved shipping carton with that carton being shipped inside another larger, well-padded carton.

One retailer that I've found to pack very well is SCSI4ME. I ordered some Seagate Constellation ES 1TB drives from them many years ago and not only were they in the SeaShells, but the Seashells themselves were inserted into a piece of solid foam packaging (the type multiple drives should be shipped in). The holes were a bit too small for the SeaShells and the foam was firm but still compressible and held the drives VERY securely. Those drives still work fine today...;)

The last time I impressed by hard drive packager was US NCIX. I bought 4 x WD Red 3tb drives a few years back and they packed beautifully. It looked like I had packed it to mail to a relative, love and care were definite.

I'm unimpressed with hard drives I got last Thursday from Amazon. First drive I tested had bad sectors. Thankfully Amazon has a good return policy. It's the first time I've ever had a DOA out of the box.

I bought 4 x Seagate NAS drives from Amazon over a year ago and they were packed fine so I'm not sure if Amazon is regressing or what.
 
I actually dropped a drive in that bubble wrap sleeve before off the shelf to a hard wood floor. Blew a couple of the bubbles out on the wrap but the drive booted up and scanned just fine. Really like that style of packaging.
 
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