Hello Selfhosted - I’m writing to y’all asking for recommendations for a retailer that will properly pack spinning platter HDDs for shipping. These devices are sensitive to impacts, and since I’m intending to use them for critical data archiving, they need to be packed with appropriate padding! Newegg is apparently incapable of understanding this.
In particular I am looking for WD Red Plus drives, 2x of them, 10TB apiece.
To name and shame Newegg, I have now gotten two shipments of these from them, around $400 each time, and they have botched the packaging so badly on both that I would never accept and trust these drives. The first RMA I requested included notes about exactly how their packing failed, and about how these devices need to be treated better, which were entirely disregarded when they packed the second round.
Who can I buy from that will take their clients’ purchases seriously?!
Amazons renewed drives usually come well packaged. Antistatic bag, suspended inside very thick air pocket thing that completely encases the drive, inside a good cardboard box.
I tried to buy an external 20TB drive from Amazon twice. First one that came, I bought refurbished; the drive had been shucked and replaced with a 146GB drive.
Second one I bought was 20TB, but was clicking and grinding from the moment I turned it on. When I tried to initiate a return saying “drive is clicking and grinding, indicating that it’s failing,” their support bot helpful informed me that a clicking and grinding drive usually indicated drive failure.
They did accept the return for the latter. They also accepted a return for the former, but it took literal months and several support interactions where the (seemingly real) agents actively lied to me.
I’ve had okay luck with smaller Amazon drives in the past, but will have trouble recommending them for this kind of purchase in the future.
Totally reasonable. I don’t shuck anymore, so I don’t have the concern of getting the wrong disk.
I’ve personally never had a problem with their returns before. But I haven’t had a doa disk out of their “renewed” internal disks yet.
That’s all I’m looking for and seems like a reasonable thing to expect, I’d prefer to avoid Amazon but am glad to know of that option, thank you! And to be clear, think you could confirm if you mean sold/fulfilled by Amazon or if you’re thinking of a 3rd party seller using Amazon the platform?
Specifically the renewed drives sold by Amazon. They are the returned/refurbished drives. I’ve probably bought 10 or so in the last few years and that’s how they’ve all come. I haven’t had a failed drive out of them yet. (Seagate 22tb and WD reds 18tb)