Please recommend a hard drive vendor

[vavavroom]

Newegg and Amazon don't package sensitive equipment properly. Not looking for a vendor who ships in a small box with the item in one layer of bubble wrap or in a big box with a couple air pillows on one side of the item. I'm totally willing to.pay extra for proper packaging.

The last HDD I got from Newegg was in an antistatic bag, a bulk and not a retail drive, wrapped in one layer of thin bubble wrap and rattling around in a very small box. They might as well have shipped the drive in a padded envelope. The drive was failing upon install.

Where do you buy your HDD's? And no, an SSD, while mire resilient to.abuse, would not be ideal for what I need it.

I can get the drive I want directly from Dell. Does anybody know how Dell packages the drives?

 

[Silver]

Best Buy

 

[vavavroom]

Best Buy

$50 more and they also ship because they don't stock it. Or do you mean to imply they ship items properly packaged?

 

[Owen Lucas]

Best Buy

BB, Staples, Office Max/Depot or a Micro Center. For HDDs I'd rather get it from the the store rather than have someone punt it to my front door.
Edit: most price match Amazon.

 

[mattwithcats]

I just bought two hard drives.

The one from Amazon was properly packed in a box with bubble padding ends cradling the drive.
It was also DOA out of the box….

NewEgg sent me the same drive, loose in a box, with one pillow padding, deflated.
Works fine…

I would choose NewEgg…

This is the first time NewEgg has disappointed me with their packing methods…

 

[mattwithcats]

Just make sure the seller is NewEgg…
I like Western Digital Black drives…

WD Black 4TB Performance Desktop Hard Drive 7200 RPM - Newegg.com

Buy WD Black 4TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 256MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD4005FZBX with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[y_p_w]

I don't know exactly who still has hard drives. There are only two or three manufacturers (Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba) left after consolidation. And they're increasingly harder to find except maybe in prepared backup drives. And I don't like those because many have direct interfaces to USB.

The one place I remember consistently selling properly packaged and shipped hard drives was Fry's Electronics. It was otherwise maddening shopping there, but they had a wealth of hard drives and didn't abuse them. Best Buy may have some, but often it's just stuff that has to be shipped individually to the customer or to the store.

If there was still CompUSA, then maybe that. I think there are still some MicroCenter stores.

 

[UG_Passat]

I go to the local Microcenter store near me in CA.

 

[benjy]

i have had DOA from Amazon for various things BUT although a PITA they ALWAYS make good + the best delivered price for my preferences gets my $$$$ usually!

 

[vavavroom]

Just make sure the seller is NewEgg…
I like Western Digital Black drives…

WD Black 4TB Performance Desktop Hard Drive 7200 RPM - Newegg.com

Buy WD Black 4TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 256MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD4005FZBX with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

They have lost me as a customer for good. Three times I have received items that were defective due to incompetent packaging.

As for Amazon, I don't ever receive anything properly packaged. I only get things that are not fragile from them. Cat food, cables, memory sticks, etc.

 

[ZeeOSix]

Why don't HDs come in their own box anymore? ... all the ones I've bought in the past did. Packaged in a nice form fitting pocket of thick Styrofoam that's inside the box. You could probably drop the box off a truck and nothing inside the Styrofoam shell would be hurt.

 

[UG_Passat]

Why don't HDs come in their own box anymore? ... all the ones I've bought in the past did. Packaged in a nice form fitting pocket of thick Styrofoam that's inside the box. You could probably drop the box off a truck and nothing inside the Styrofoam shell would be hurt.

THey do. Only if you pay more money for "retail packaging".

If you purchase the OEM meant for computer shops, then it comes in the anti-static bag, as when they arrive to the shop, they arrive in better packaging designed to hold multiple hard drives in a larger corrugated cardboard box.

 

[CB22]

B&H photo.

 

[y_p_w]

Why don't HDs come in their own box anymore? ... all the ones I've bought in the past did. Packaged in a nice form fitting pocket of thick Styrofoam that's inside the box. You could probably drop the box off a truck and nothing inside the Styrofoam shell would be hurt.

Depends on how you get it. I used to buy drives and memory from Fry's Electronics. They would have all sorts of things including retail packaged drives with some sort of clamshell. Every SATA drive I bought from them came in a box considerably larger than the drive in some sort of clamshell protection - either cardboard like an egg carton or plastic. But they did sell bare drives that came in nothing except an ESD bag. I also remember getting what was then the highest performance 7200 RPM SATA drive on the market - a Hitachi 200 GB 7200 RPM drive for a Mac. The only place I could find it at a reasonable price was NewEgg and when it arrived they actually packaged it pretty securely with lots of bubble wrap, but the drive itself was packaged in just an ESD bag. I think I paid maybe $160 for it.

I bought a couple of 2.5" SATA SSDs (SanDisk Ultra 3D and WD Blue which are pretty much the same) and they only came in small cardboard boxes that were just large enough the the drive and several pamphlets/cards.

 

[nthach]

Retail-packaged Western Digital. Unless there’s a small computer shop near you.

 

[JustinH]

Just did an RMA for a consumer SSD drive from Samsung. They were fast and no problem. I'd stick with them.

Purchased locally at best buy.

 

[PandaBear]

You cannot tell who handled it before you get it, so just get the retail one instead of large bulk one, with full warranty.

 

[dubber09]

SSDs are not as sensitive to G forces as spinning disks. I'd suggest getting spinning disk at a local computer/electronics store, if anything goes wrong within short time after purchasing then the store should provide an exchange and deal with warranty themselves, longer into warranty - you'll have to deal with manufacturer.

 

[Lubener]

Agree with the others, buy at a local retail store such as Best Buy. Rough handling is what is the worst enemy of a hard drive. I would almost guarantee rough handling ordering online. There aren't many brands anymore but I would go for W.D.

 

[Rand]

buy retail packaged item not oem.