Newegg + UPS = dead drive

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icehole

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I got a Hitachi 1 TB drive from Newegg back in January to use for backups. About a month ago Acronis started giving me read and write errors on the drive. Cobian Backup wrote to the drive fine.

Yesterday I ran HD Tune and it said the drive failed the read test. I downloaded Hitachi's drive fitness test software and it said the drive was damaged, "excessive shock". I'm surprised it worked for 5 months without problem.

The drive came in Newegg's usual bubble wrap with packing peanuts but I guess UPS played football with the box.

What online store packs their OEM drives the best?
 
The drive was dead before Newegg even had it. Why do people still whine about retailer packaging? Hard drives are designed to withstand tons of force. A hard drive is handled by the factory, by the freight carrier, then the retailer, then shipping again. Chances are it was defective at the factory.
 
Well my only question then would be: when you mail it back for RMA, can/will they deny your claim citing the "excessive shock" as suspect of YOU abusing it?
 
It's not excessive shock. I would bet money that it was defective leaving the factory. They could never prove that it's your fault, and there's no reason for someone to tamper with a hard drive. You have to pay to ship it back.
 
GJSNeptune said:
It's not excessive shock. I would bet money that it was defective leaving the factory. They could never prove that it's your fault, and there's no reason for someone to tamper with a hard drive. You have to pay to ship it back.
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Guess I will find out in a week or so.

So, if I had run HD Tune on the drive when I got it back in January would it have shown up as good or damaged?
 
If there is a problem in shipping you will know right away. You got this drive back in January. It's not the shipping. It's a defective drive.
 
GJSNeptune said:
The drive was dead before Newegg even had it. Why do people still whine about retailer packaging? Hard drives are designed to withstand tons of force. A hard drive is handled by the factory, by the freight carrier, then the retailer, then shipping again. Chances are it was defective at the factory.
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Disclaimer: I still Love Newegg, just not for HDD purchases.

You know I realize that its entirely possible for it to have been dead before newegg had it.
But the only DOA drives I have ever recieved and about 80% of ones I have had to RMA have been from Newegg.

And I have received drives from newegg that had almost Zero packaging,
One time I bought 4 HDD's they were stacked on top of each other with no bubble wrap or anything inbetween each drive, one layer of bubble wrap around the whole set, and no peanuts to keep the 4 drives from shifting around in the box.
So they were just banging against each other the whole ride to my house.
Was it coincidental that 3 of the 4 drives were DOA from the Manufacturer? Maybe
Is it more likely that Newegg was careless, caused damage to the product? Seems to be more likely IMO

Drives I have purchased from ZZF or Directron dont seem to have the issues that I seem to get when I purchase from Newegg.

Whether or not its actually Newegg's fault, there is just too high of a failure correlation to logically suspect anything else.
 
I've bought many hard drives from Newegg without issues. Again I don't think this was a Newegg or a shipping issue. I think the drive was probably bad from the factory.
 
The only hard drive from Newegg I had to RMA was my first and only Seagate I purchased a couple years ago.
 
The title's misleading...

Every controller I plug my drives into will tell me of a SMART problem when I turn the computer on. Apparently yours don't?

If your controllers don't, wouldn't at minimum running a fitness test when you receive it seem prudent?

(BTW - this post is NOT to be misinterpreted at pro-Newegg...)
 
GJSNeptune said:
The drive was dead before Newegg even had it. Why do people still whine about retailer packaging? Hard drives are designed to withstand tons of force. A hard drive is handled by the factory, by the freight carrier, then the retailer, then shipping again. Chances are it was defective at the factory.
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Do you have a citation for this claim?

1 ton = 2000 lb of force, or the weight of about 10 overweight adult males. How long do you imagine a HDD would last when subjected to accelerations that create literally "tons" of inertial forces?
 
GJSNeptune said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaggeration
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That was kind of my point. So how much acceleration (caused by mechanical shock) is a typical HDD designed to withstand and remain fully functional? Do you have any numbers? Given the extreme tolerances to which the moving parts have to be built, I cannot imagine that you could drop a HDD on a concrete floor from a height of 4 ft or more and expect it to survive. Which might be a common scenario for a HDD packed in a shoddy big box with no padding on its way to the consumer from a retail warehouse.
 
Every controller I plug my drives into will tell me of a SMART problem when I turn the computer on
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I've never had that happen.

I've seen others talk about it but I've never had it happen.
 
While ON hard drive max Gs: Around 70G
While OFF hard drive max Gs: Around 300-400G.

Yes, I know.

Edit: See my post in Newegg Customer Support in the Hot Deals Discussion Forum. Newegg can't pack anything for their lives.
 
Dan_D said:
I've bought many hard drives from Newegg without issues. Again I don't think this was a Newegg or a shipping issue. I think the drive was probably bad from the factory.
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THIS

i have bought over 20 drives in the last 16 months from newegg and have had Zero problems.
 
aubsxc said:
That was kind of my point. So how much acceleration (caused by mechanical shock) is a typical HDD designed to withstand and remain fully functional? Do you have any numbers? Given the extreme tolerances to which the moving parts have to be built, I cannot imagine that you could drop a HDD on a concrete floor from a height of 4 ft or more and expect it to survive. Which might be a common scenario for a HDD packed in a shoddy big box with no padding on its way to the consumer from a retail warehouse.
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Your point was taking my exaggeration literally? Yes, I absolutely meant that hard drives can withstand multiple tons of force.

People whine about Newegg's shipping, but they're the penultimate handler. The factory ships them. Newegg receives and stocks them. The person fulfilling the pick-tickets handles them. A courier handles them. The driver handles them. Then you handle them.
 
GJSNeptune said:
The drive was dead before Newegg even had it. Why do people still whine about retailer packaging? Hard drives are designed to withstand tons of force. A hard drive is handled by the factory, by the freight carrier, then the retailer, then shipping again. Chances are it was defective at the factory.
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While this is most likely the case, it's also not accurate to simply discount it because you've only had one drive rma'ed out of a VERY small sample of orders.

While hard drives were designed to stand a lot of force (approximately 300g for a desktop drive), it's not out of the realms to experience this shock in bad shipping situations. There is a reason why companies such as WD, Seagate, Hitachi, and other elements will NOT honor a RMA if the drive has been poorly packaged or outside of it's packaging specifications. Newegg for the most part does a decent job in packaging, but for a lot of part they do not.

There is also a reason why carriers pull insurance on hard drives when shipping them bulk and there is even more of a reason why all of our crtical storage systems are shipped via air freight to protect the hard drives from damage as required by our vendor contracts. There are reasons why many vendors refuses to ship pallets of drives on trucks without air ride equipment.


To simply dismiss that a shit packaging job on a non air ride equipped truck handled at several stops, delivered by a guy who could give a shit less and handled by a bunch of minimum wage workers is quite a gross assumption.


When you have ordered drives in the volumes that I have or that others have, then we can talk about statistics. When you have had a drive DENTED (yes, I mean DENTED) from shipping impacts, we can talk again. When you have had drives rub and bang each others pcb chips off, then we can talk again.


Like I have said, it's most likely not the case but you can't simply dismiss it because you bought only a few hard drives.


/rant.
 
Ockie said:
While this is most likely the case, it's also not accurate to simply discount it because you've only had one drive rma'ed out of a VERY small sample of orders.
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What I said was not based on my having to RMA only one drive.
 
GJSNeptune said:
Your point was taking my exaggeration literally? Yes, I absolutely meant that hard drives can withstand multiple tons of force.

People whine about Newegg's shipping, but they're the penultimate handler. The factory ships them. Newegg receives and stocks them. The person fulfilling the pick-tickets handles them. A courier handles them. The driver handles them. Then you handle them.
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300G on a half pound drive is not tons of force.

While you are correct about newegg being the small picture here, you also need to realize that the drives shipped from the factory come on pallets which are protected by shrink wrap and then are double boxed with a wall of shock foam, each drive is then cocooned in the foam (samsung goes even further and places theirs inside a plastic coffin). Then the drives are shipped on an air ride equiped truck. The impact for freight transport for such a pallet is pretty low as you have a lot of impact negating mechanisms... you also realize that the palets are not thrown off a truck or drop kicked.

To give you an idea, eggs are moved this way also, but you wouldn't want to ship them in a poorly packaged UPS box.
 
I think what would be great to do or to study would be to ship a pile of boxes loaded with an accelerometer and let this case rest for once and all.
 
Those patches are a crap shoot. Half the time they are not even triggered. Their digital versions that you place inside of the package might be decent.
 
Well, if anyone has any of the digital shockwatches, I'd be willing to do a ship-back as well via UPS.
 
For my newest build...

I bought my first drive from ChiefValue, which is the sister-site of Newegg. The drive arrived in decent packaging, no problem.

Ordered the second from Newegg. Thin layer of bubble wrap around the drive with peanuts on top only. I decided to keep it. Now that drive has developed a bad sector and I'm in the process of a RMA with WD.

Ordered my last drive from Amazon. Best "custom" packaging yet.

There's really no point in every ordering HDD's from newegg when you have ZZF and Amazon offering the same, or lower, prices with far superior packaging.
 
NewEgg doesn't care about HD packing anymore. I ordered a Hitachi 1TB about a month ago and it came inside a collapsed bubble wrap. When I opened the drive, small pieces of plastic fell out of the package. RMAed the drive without even trying. Second one, replacement, came in EXACTLY the same type of collapsed bubble wrap packing, but nothing was broken.

Putting a badly cushioned HD in the bottom of a box and then filling it with some paper isn't the best way to pack a shock sensitive item.

Complained a couple of times, but I don't think they care. I am done buying HD's from NewEgg.
 
I loved the email gave me after my last shipment (see the thread I mentioned above, Hot Deals Discussion Forum, Newegg Customer Support thread) about the "new" packaging material (that crap paper padding). Needless to say, they got some negative feedback from me about it.
 
Tolyngee said:
The title's misleading...

Every controller I plug my drives into will tell me of a SMART problem when I turn the computer on. Apparently yours don't?

If your controllers don't, wouldn't at minimum running a fitness test when you receive it seem prudent?

(BTW - this post is NOT to be misinterpreted at pro-Newegg...)
Click to expand...

I had the drive in an eSata external enclosure that was connected to a Rosewill RC-216 eSata controller card. The bios on that card never gave any indication of a problem.

I connected the drive to the external eSata port on my Foxconn P45A yesterday morning to test if the Rosewill card was the problem. When I booted up the motherboard bios did indicate that the drive was bad and I should back it up.
 
Look, I'm just going to spell it out for people, for the umpteenth time.

There is no argument. Newegg's packing of hard drives is utter crap. Drives packed only in bubble wrap should be RMA'd as damaged in shipping, and the drive manufacturer should be notified. Newegg's hard drive packaging is in violation of every manufacturer's requirements and can result in your warranty being voided.

Now quit arguing about it. Don't believe me, go read the manufacturer support sections. They all spell out very clearly that packing a drive the way Newegg does voids your RMA and warranty.


http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/packaging.htm
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/su...s_assistance/packing_&_shipping_instructions/
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/rmapacking.asp#approvedpackaging
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/warranty/Support_Warranty.html


EDIT: Also, shock sensors do not give "false positives." It takes VERY little force for an improperly packaged drive to trip the shock sensor; typically 3 feet or so. And the typical abuse any package gets through UPS is multiple drops of up to 3' because of the way their conveyor systems work and are designed. (FedEx and DHL is pretty much the same, before people get off on the "UPS sucks go $OtherShipper" crap. EVERYONE does it.)
 
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I don't know of any retailer that adheres to the same guidlines set my the manufacturer for RMA packaging. Not a single retailer.

That said I have never received a dead drive from newegg. Not in all the years i've been shopping there. Not with all the systems and servers i've built. I have also gotten drives from zzf, tiger direct, buy.com and amazon. The packaging has always been similar.
 
Archer75 said:
I don't know of any retailer that adheres to the same guidlines set my the manufacturer for RMA packaging. Not a single retailer.
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ZZF, NCIX (both CA and US), MicroCenter, and Amazon all adhere to the requirements as set by the manufacturers for both single and multiple drives, including multi-drive foam crates. Please learn to read the links I provided before making incorrect statements. There are only a few key requirements when shipping mixed; minimum 2" from any wall, SeaShell or similar for the drive or minimum 1" closed cell foam on all sides, and ensuring that the drive does not move during shipment.
NewEgg is the only major shipper which does not adhere to any of the requirements.
 
And yet so many of us have had very few, if any, issues with hard drives purchased from Newegg. I wasn't too thrilled when ZZF shipped me a hard drive stuck into the white foam box that had plenty of room inside it to let the drive move around. I'd rather have the bubble-wrap.

Hard drives + Amazon Prime = little girl squeal
 
AreEss said:
ZZF, NCIX (both CA and US), MicroCenter, and Amazon all adhere to the requirements as set by the manufacturers for both single and multiple drives, including multi-drive foam crates. Please learn to read the links I provided before making incorrect statements. There are only a few key requirements when shipping mixed; minimum 2" from any wall, SeaShell or similar for the drive or minimum 1" closed cell foam on all sides, and ensuring that the drive does not move during shipment.
NewEgg is the only major shipper which does not adhere to any of the requirements.
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No, they are not the only one. I haven't had that from any retailer I listed. Please learn to read what I wrote. I haven't had that kind of packaging when purchasing a hard drive from any of the sites I listed. Never.
I am well versed in those RMA packing requirements you posted.
 
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i was told by someone that used to work for sun microsystems that the G rateing for a desktop hard drive is about as such, 75g's = about 1ft drop onto concerte (no padding) 300g's = about 3.5 foot drop onto concrete no padding, bascliy if you knocked a non-powered up HD off your workbench, onto concrete, its toast, if you have a powered up HD (say for testing, and your moveing it back into the case, which would require it to be lifted about 1 foot off the work bench) you fumble and drop it... its toast.. now this is not a hard rule it dose depend on how the drive lands, but i wouldnt trust a dirve that has ever been droped even a little bit while powered off.

also, i dont trust any of my shipments to ups,i know at one point in time it used to be there policy that any and all shipments had to be packed to withstand a 8ft drop... no thanks
 
Man you guys are pretty heated. I think i'll sit this one out.
 
Please don't derail this thread. Also, osrk, don't comment in the future if you have nothing to contribute but bait.
 
veritas7 said:
Please don't derail this thread. Also, osrk, don't comment in the future if you have nothing to contribute but bait.
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Exactly... Last warning for everyone: Keep it on topic. If you don't want to discuss the subject at hand, keep out of it.
 
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