Glut of bad drives at Newegg? post RMA 'bare' drives!

maux

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Aug 27, 2009
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I love Newegg, tip-top service and great deals. But I've had an uncharacteristic set of bad drives from them recently. I'm not sure if the issue is the drives I'm choosing to buy (bare drives), the shipping method (maybe? I dunno), or if there is a industry standard problem with bad drives.

First drive; Seagate 7200.12 1TB. Drive detects in BIOS properly. Unable to format the drive out of the box with bootable WinXP install disk. I boot up MHDD and scan it to find that it's got more than 100 >500ms sectors some 400 <500ms sectors and scads of ~120ms blocks. This drive is clearly worthless, but like everyone I've heard of Seagates recent issues with some series of drives and chalk it up to that. RMA it and ordered two smaller WD drives.

Second drive; WD 640GB Caviar Black. Drive does not detect in BIOS, drive does not detect in XP install cd (of course), in MHDD drive is detecting as 'not ready'. This drive is also clearly worthless. I had ordered two of these so I threw in the second and viola, it works fine, I'm currently running on it fine.

One thing I've noticed about both of these orders is that they both were shipped UPS ground (probably not an issue) and that they both came from the Newegg RMA center! Were these drives previously RMA'ed? Were they already shipped back to Newegg's RMA center with issues? Is the drive I'm currently running going to give me trouble later on?

I'm not sure what to think, and I'll continue shopping with Newegg for sure but I wanted to let you guys know that I'm considering avoiding the 'bare' drives in my future orders.

Anyone else having issues with these drives from Newegg? Anyone having issues with ether of these series of drives? Maybe check what shipping you had on your last hard drive order?

-maux
 
I stick to ZZF for hard drives, every HDD i've gotten from newegg has failed on me. (just two, I them the benifit of the doubt after hearing some horror stories) I have 5 drives from ZZF, no issues to date. I use them for pretty much everything else though
 
Newegg's packaging isn't helping them any. Sometimes when I get drives from them I wonder how they could even be working.
 
Ive had two hard drives from Newegg and both have failed. The first one was DOA and the second one lasted about a year.
 
I just got a Samsung F3 500GB oem from them and it too came from the RMA Warehouse, but it came with the typical clearshell cover, screws and install paper that some oem drives come with(not just a static bag).

My thought(I hope its true) is that its Newegg's RMA return center but they also use it as a secondary warehouse for bulk items.


Guess I should add I have bought atleast 15 hard drives from newegg over the past 5+ years and have had 0 go bad on me(fingers crossed!).
 
The best way i've found to get well packed drives from the egg is to order it as a single drive with NO other items. By doing this, it always comes multiple layers of bubble wrap & peanuts in a decent sized box. Never had a failure with this method.
 
Ignore the RMA warehouse part. Its so denied orders go back to RMA warehouse for sorting etc. This was discussed in another thread. My 5870 came in the same way.
 
we order alot of hard drives from newegg here at work. they come packed pretty well and one so far that was bad. granted this is a business so they might treat us differently then a home consumer.
 
I've had 2 bad drives out of 5 from egg over the last two years, I swear they need to do something about how they package the things.
 
From my experience I cannot figure out how people complain about Newegg's OEM hard drive packaging. When I buy drives they are in static bags in triple wrapped in thick bubble wrap and put in a ton of peanuts. Seem packaged better than a what usually would come in being the cardboard tray.
 
People have complained about NE's HDD shipping for years. This isn't a random issue.
 
Drives fail and I would bet that of people that have purchased a hard drive and visit these forums which is a specific subset of people probably 95% have ordered at least one drive from Newegg in the past 3 years. Its the law of averages guys, if you honestly think the drive failure rate from Newegg is higher based on more people complaining that is truly faulty logic.

Frankly I've some horribly wrapped hardware shipped from quite a few vendors over the years but I've ordered in excess of 30 drives of various manufacturers from Newegg throughout the years and every single time they came individually wrapped in a wad of bubble wrap the width of the entire box and easily 6 inches thick at its thinnest. The issue isn't so much how Newegg wraps them IMHO but rather how the shippers handle them. Have you ever noticed how the boxes in half these "horrible Newegg packing" look like someone tossed them out the window of an airplane while flying over the person's house?

I can tell you from experience and first hand reports from friends that have worked in UPS sorting warehouses that things get tossed around a lot in shipping and sometimes they even fall off the 3 story convener belts or get hit be a transfer cart or UPS truck. Yes, they drive the UPS trucks into the warehouse and park them and these warehouses are huge to say the least. It worth mentioning that 2nd day and next day packages get sorted and handled quite a bit less and are generally much more likely to survive in good condition.

Anyways just really my two cents worth as personally I've always had good luck with Newegg and plan to continue buying from them until they prove otherwise or jack their prices.
 
I've bought one drive from PCConnections, quite a few drives from NewEgg (at least six in the last year and a half), and of course I get hard drives that come with computers I have ordered from Dell and HP.

The only drives I have ever had that went bad were a Samsung laptop drive that came with the HP notebook I bought, the Samsung drive that was used as a replacement for the first Samsung in the HP, and the Samsung desktop drive that came with my Dell desktop.

So far, I'm okay with all my NewEgg drives...but I just say no to Samsung now.
 
From my experience I cannot figure out how people complain about Newegg's OEM hard drive packaging. When I buy drives they are in static bags in triple wrapped in thick bubble wrap and put in a ton of peanuts. Seem packaged better than a what usually would come in being the cardboard tray.

When I ordered my $850 X25-E a year ago it came with a USPS envelope with bubble wrap which they charged me $15 shipping for. Newegg is a high volume big business which means they pack with what they have available in their warehouse. They are a business; don't assume for one moment they wouldn't try to cut costs wherever possible when the option presents itself.
 
When I ordered my $850 X25-E a year ago it came with a USPS envelope with bubble wrap which they charged me $15 shipping for. Newegg is a high volume big business which means they pack with what they have available in their warehouse. They are a business; don't assume for one moment they wouldn't try to cut costs wherever possible when the option presents itself.

Yeah, but it sucks for us customers when they do that.
 
One thing I've noticed about both of these orders is that they both were shipped UPS ground (probably not an issue) and that they both came from the Newegg RMA center! Were these drives previously RMA'ed? Were they already shipped back to Newegg's RMA center with issues? Is the drive I'm currently running going to give me trouble later on?
-maux

Ignore the RMA warehouse part. Its so denied orders go back to RMA warehouse for sorting etc. This was discussed in another thread. My 5870 came in the same way.

Dear maux,

Thank you for posting your review. As Copywrite stated, that is a return label so items will return to our RMA Warhouse for processing. Please check the tracking information to see the package's origination. If you would like assistance with your RMAs, please call me at 800-390-1119 ext 25092 or simply e-mail me at [email protected]
 
It could be worse.I ordered a laptop drive a the beginning of the year from J&R Computer World via Amazon and the thing came in a cardboard box in one layer of bubble wrap without packing peanuts.


The bubble wrap was somehow undone from the drive when I first opened the package, so the thing was obviously flopping around in the box during freight.

Luckily for me it still works well to this day (you can always count on your WD:)). Despite that, I know where I won't be ordering OEM drives from now on.
 
You could always just send the drive back to Seagate or Western Digital directly.
 
There was that thread where newegg said they were trying out new packing methods, and everyone was happy for a month. Why? They went back to peanuts, and well same old story.

When I get drives from the egg, it always seems to cost me another 5 bucks per drive somehow... It's the shipping cost to send the doa drive back. :LOL:
 
I've never had a bad drive from newegg. I have 18 drives in my house right now that are in use and all from newegg.
 
I have purchased about 20 hard drives of all sorts in the previous 2 years and no bad ones yet.
 
There are other things like "bad lots" of drives. This isn't limited to Newegg.
 
It certainly seems like an issue with drives coming from Newegg but personally I question if its a warehouse issue as they have multiple locations around the US. I've had about a 50% failure rate of the drives coming out of the NJ warehouse, 1 which had a corner completely smashed in. Note this was not from shipping as the packaging was pristine but instead most likely dropped as they were attempting to package it. Of course Newegg wanted to put the blame on UPS and simply refused to admit it was their fault.

Just my opinion but I would avoid buying any HDs from Newegg unless you don't mind dealing with RMAs.
 
I ordered a WD Blue drive a few weeks ago.. it was double or triple wrapped in bubbles and peanuts in the box. Works fine
 
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