What is it with shipping hard drives?

[OWC Jamie]

Robert M wrote:
Navicular,

The difference is the amount of material available to absorb the shock. An adequate amount of material is key. Space sufficient for jouncing is inadequate.

Robert

The inner box already HAS the padding.

Put a drive in a padded box in your left hand .
Put a drive in a padded box inside a box.
Drop both to a concrete floor.

The drive in your right hand receives less of a shock as it hits the ground because it has the extra padding of the corrugated outer box.



Repeat the above experiment.
Except this time you yourself have to climb a ladder 10 feet and jump to a concrete floor bare foot.
One side of the ladder is bare floor, the other side has a flat cardboard box on top of the floor.
Tell me you're going to receive less of a shock jumping onto the bare concrete.

[Doc]

RAMd®d wrote:
Every HD I got from NewEgg was a "bare" drive, wrapped in bubble wrap, but otherwilse loose in the box, free to bounce around. Out of five HDs, two were DOA and one died in a month. The last one could be unrelated to the packaging, I admit.

But I don't buy HDs from NewEgg anymore. And I don't buy "bare drives" anymore either.

NewEgg has responded to customer complaints.

OEM drives are now wrapped in bubble wrap and also submerged in packing peanuts.

[Robert M]

Bill,

Here are UPS's packaging guidelines:



Many vendors can learn a thing or two from them. I teach my employees to take these instructions and go a step beyond them when packaging our goods for transport.

Robert

[RAMd®d]

The drive in your right hand receives less of a shock as it hits the ground because it has the extra padding of the corrugated outer box.

And how much less of a shock is that? And how much "extra padding" consisting solely of a corrugated box is adequate?

For my money the function/value of a single-wall, empty (no additional packing) corrugated box is for more crush resistance than shock absorption. Some energy is absorbed, but not nearly enough for my liking.

I'd wager a drive inside a padded box inside a box with additional packing will receive less of a shock than a drive inside a padded box inside a box without additional packing, free to jounce around around.

And a bare drive wrapped in bubble-wrap free to bounce around will likely fair worse than former.

I'm glad NewEgg has stopped it's previous practice. But I'll still opt for Retail over OEM (with the one exception I mentioned earlier) in another box with additional packing.

HDs already in computers seem adequately protected to me, since the computers I've received have been very well packed.

Years ago I ordered a LaCie electron blue II from smalldog. It was shipped to CA in the original box. That had only a molded piece of styrofoam on the top and bottom. The box arrived severely damaged with the bottom styrofoam broken into several pieces.

Amazingly, the monitor was unblemished and appeared to be in perfect working order. I thought for sure that at least the convergence would be shot, but no, it was perfect. That was more about luck than proper packaging.

But I never ordered from smalldog again.