Backblaze Hard Drive Reliability Report

[jgreco]

Or you could use Seagate. (just teasin' cyberjock)

 

[Johhhn]

with Black Friday approaching-- anyone fancying on getting some new drives?

Also, speaking of reliability-- has anyone here had any 3 or 4 TB drive(s) fail? If so, how did the rebuild process go? Was it smooth?

I'm still very cautious with *large* drives and the horrendous BER that goes with it.

 

[Z300M]

I don't know about other online vendors, but there have been complaints of NewEgg simply throwing "bare" drives in a carton with woefully inadequate packaging. In this case I would be inclined to buy the "retail" versions of the "consumer" drives, which are often only slightly more expensive (and sometimes even slightly cheaper) than the "bare" drives. because the "retail" versions come in their own individual cartons with appropriate anti-shock insulation.

 

[cyberjock]

You know, I've heard that rumor too. Never seen pictures or anything. But if you search on just about every etailer out there, every single one has been accused of it. I have to assume that its someone that's not familiar with how to properly ship them and when someone calls and complains the person that boxed up the order gets trained on proper shipping methods. I've bought more than 100 drives from Newegg and every single one has had sufficient packaging for me to not feel concerned about it. I've bought about 10 drives from Amazon and they all arrived in sufficient packaging too. /shrug

 

[cmfisher4]

I've been hearing about Newegg doing that stuff for YEARS (I first ordered from them in 2001, about 6 months after they opened their "doors"). I have purchased every hard drive from them, and only them, these past 12 years and they have always arrived just fine. Granted, not as many as cyberjock, but maybe a dozen or two.
And, yes, I am chomping at the bit for good hard drive deals. The cheapest during the run-up that I've seen the 3TB WD reds (either Amazon or Newegg) was around $125. The 4TB around $180. I really want to go with 4TB so I can lower my $/TB, but the absolute cost is still too high, even at $180. Now, $160 and I'll suffer the wrath of the wife for that!

 

[jgreco]

The 4TB's had been going for $149 over the summer which is when I picked some up. I'd sit tight and see what Black Friday brings.

As for retail vendor shipping:

This has changed somewhat over the years, and it is due at least in part to other factors. Certain products, including drives, memory, and CPU's, often come in bulk packaging for OEM or large customer use. They are slightly (sometimes only just barely) cheaper this way. In the specific example of hard drives, they typically come in cases of 20. Years ago, they would come in individual clamshells that were packed in a styrofoam enclosure:



and the manufacturers more or less moved on to just wrapping a drive in an anti-static bag and sticking it in this sort of shipper. So when your e-tailer gets an order for one bare drive, someone yanks one out of a box like this. In the case of a multi-drive order, I've seen them actually cut up and use the styro packer from the case... better than nothing but not necessarily good protection. The real problem is that what the drive mfrs would consider to be "acceptable" shipping involves a bit more work and trouble than the guys in the warehouse are likely to go to; they're just trying to clear orders. Most of their other merchandise is already packaged reasonably. Sigh.

 

[JohnK]

With Black Friday coming up, I will be looking for some more drives for my backup system or maybe just some spares.

Anyway, I just bought 4 WD red 3TB from Newegg. ($124.99) They were all packaged inside bubble wrap with sealed antistatic bags inside a box with air bags. Something like this www.ebay.com/itm/like/271300589016?lpid=82

I also bought two of the same drives from TigerDirect ($139.99-$30 rebate) The packaging was completely different. Big solid plastic container (need to be cut) with silicon and RFI stuck to anti-static bag. I am sure this is how WD shipped them.

I have not had time to test any of them, but the packaging seemed adequate.I will keep track of the performance of these two different set of drives, but my gut feel is that I'm more happy with the bubble wrap.

 

[Z300M]

With Black Friday coming up, I will be looking for some more drives for my backup system or maybe just some spares.

Anyway, I just bought 4 WD red 3TB from Newegg. ($124.99) They were all packaged inside bubble wrap with sealed antistatic bags inside a box with air bags. Something like this www.ebay.com/itm/like/271300589016?lpid=82

I also bought two of the same drives from TigerDirect ($139.99-$30 rebate) The packaging was completely different. Big solid plastic container (need to be cut) with silicon and RFI stuck to anti-static bag. I am sure this is how WD shipped them.

I have not had time to test any of them, but the packaging seemed adequate.I will keep track of the performance of these two different set of drives, but my gut feel is that I'm more happy with the bubble wrap.

The "bare" Seagate drives I bought from Tiger Direct a couple of years ago came in individual "clamshell" packs. I don't recall what other packaging was between those packs and the carton -- crumpled brown paper or bubble-wrap.

 

[jgreco]

Right, they just pulled them out of the case, in all likelihood. A little bubble wrap in between drives and sufficient (probably bubblewrap) padding around the set is probably acceptable packing for clamshelled drives.

 

[JohnK]

The TigerDirect drives in huge clamshells had no bubble wrap. It did have a large WD label to be used for rebate purposes. Considering the silicon. And RFI I believe that is WD original packaging.

The New egg drives are obviously bulk drives re packaged. Even though those bubblewrapped sleeves seems to work well, I might consider buying one drive at a time to make sure they don't damage one another during shipment.

 

[JohnK]

I do see WD 2TB RE drives selling for $160 plus shipping at Directron. That is starting to become nearly afforable specially with 5 year warrantee.
Also notice Super micro boards 15% off this weekend on the Egg. Might be time for that second NAS board!

 

[cmfisher4]

Newegg just posted a video (on Facebook) about their new hard drive packaging. Not a whole lot of information about it on the video, but at least they are taking action.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E2GCqslsgo

 

[JohnK]

At 1 minute you catch a climse of the air column bag. I will say of all the drives I have ever purchased, this is probably the best packaging.

 

[cyberjock]

WOW. Just slightly overdramatic and very low on details. But from the 1 second of video that shows the actual packaging, I don't see it being "superior" to the old bubble wrap method. No doubt tons of geeks will now swear by it for its superior protection and stuff.

 

[cmfisher4]

lol, yeah, a bit disappointed with the proof vice the commercial gimmick of the video. I'm sure, however, that no hamsters were injured in the filming.

 

[cyberjock]

I've really wondered wtf Newegg is doing lately. They really seem to have lost their core users with their gimmicky videos, weird products for sale(sometimes at outrageously expensive prices... like 5x the MSRP sometimes), and other odd website decisions of late. It's like they've either lost touch with their user base or a bunch of morons suddenly took over and they're doing everything they can to destroy newegg. Even I don't shop there much anymore and I used to buy every part from them exclusively.

 

[DrKK]

I, too, will admit that I have gone from a 90/5/5 Newegg/Amazon/MicroCenter spread to something more like 30/40/30.

 

[Z300M]

I, too, will admit that I have gone from a 90/5/5 Newegg/Amazon/MicroCenter spread to something more like 30/40/30.

The last two significant computer-related items I've bought came from Amazon because they had better prices. I've also bought "retail" Seagate drives from BestBuy because the prices were about the same as NewEgg and I could see that they were 2-yr-warranty drives rather than the 1-yr-warrantly ones that people were receiving from NewEgg.
I used to shop at MicroCenter when I lived near one of their stores, but I've moved, and the emails I get from them now typically say that the deals are not available online.

 

[jgreco]

I never saw what was so great about NewEgg, but on the other hand I haven't carefully tracked this. We aggressively source from a variety of wholesale and retail distributors. I will say that in the last 10-15 years we've been using more retail fronts like NewEgg; there was a tipping point in the mid-2000's when we were finding that distributors like TechData were heavily discounting to dropshippers like YesMicro (defunct now) so much that it was cheaper to do that than to buy direct from TD.

Too bad about Froogle though. :)