Amazon Packaging of Seagate Drives I have been reading several of the reviews on this product, and am curious whether Amazon has begun shipping Seagate HDs in more appropriate packaging. I want to make sure that I get a working, undamaged product when I open the box, so can anyone attest to a change in Amazon's packaging for these? There are a lot of reviews that complain about this issue... Amazon Packaging of Seagate Drives I have been reading several of the reviews on this product, and am curious whether Amazon has begun shipping Seagate HDs in more appropriate packaging. I want to... » Read More Amazon Packaging of Seagate Drives I have been reading several of the reviews on this product, and am curious whether Amazon has begun shipping Seagate HDs in more appropriate packaging. I want to make sure that I get a working, undamaged product when I open the box, so can anyone attest to a change in Amazon's packaging for these? There are a lot of reviews that complain about this issue... « Show Less
326663
I had the same experience as Klaus, same type of packing, very poor, have my fingers crossed.
326664
In October, my 7200.11 came packed in two black plastic end-caps suspending it inside a recycled cardboard box. Looks like Seagate standard; at least, it has their HDD model number label on the outside of the box. That should be fine for the drops from most shipping gorillas, but recycled D-flute crushes easier than virgin, so it ought to be inside a second box to ship. (My particular order happened to be inside another box with other items.) The black plastic caps seem like the same plastic as Other World uses to ship their finished-goods external drives.
326665
I purchased two ST31000528AS 1TB Seagate hard drives and the drives were shipped in an over-sized box with minimal air paks for padding. The pair of drives had no packaging other then the anti-static bags, they were just lose in this over-sized box so they could bang into each other all the way to my house. The plastic anti-static packaging had holes in it from where the hard drives smash against each other while in transit.
326666
Maybe it is luck of the draw. I ordered directly from Amazon and received the bad cardboard packaging. I have not got around to installing the drive yet(hopefully this weekend), so do not know if there will be issues.
326667
I ordered from Amazon directly - no third party. The bad inner box was due to Seagate. The bad outer box was due to Amazon.
1464531
Send it back, it's defective. They shipped out a lot of defective ones... esp. around December for the holidays when they were on sale. I suspect while they were on sale & they were selling lots of them, they put inferior drives in them to increase their profit margin.
1038970
They put old used drives in these. So it's potluck if you get one that actually works, or will last long. When I opened mine up (I bought 2) they both had drives from 2007 in them. I bought these as new at full price. If I wanted a well used 2007 drive I could have got one for almost nothing.
1316541
I don't buy a lot of items from Amazon, however, in the past they have always posted the contents of the box. Makes for no surprises! However, in my most recent searches it appears box contents are no longer high priority. Amazon apparently doesn't read these posts, either, or ignores them if they do. I guess Amazon expects patrons to answer the questions. Not a good business practice, as you get negative comments like mine. I am in the market for an ZS-7, but may have to slip to the ZS-6 as I can at least know what I am buying at Costco.
457110
nope, your drive should be fine. These used to be shown as being OEM (NOT Retail packaging) shipped drives, but I don't see that now. So, if you were expecting a retail box, then return it; otherwise there are no differences.
1000739
No, it's just showing you the platter type and what it looks like inside. It's a perfectly fine working piece of equipment. It's not used, it's not refurbed or anything. This type of packaging just means that it was normally used in like OEM equipment, but they didn't need to use it, or that it was just overstock stuff. It's a brand new hard drive.
62919
My hard drive was not packed well. Air bag underneath and on top but no sides so the packing had slipped to the side of it and the hard drive was touching bare box. I was very concerned when I opened the box but the drive appears to be ok.
1336046
The one I bought for my sister 18 months ago shipped with a Seagate part number but with the Samsung part number included in its description (and carried a Samsung firmware ID). I think I've seen it advertized since without mentioning the Seagate part number but unless there were some left-overs from the good old Samsung days suspect these were also actually Seagate drives (though I've never seen any indication that the DESIGN was not still Samsung's).
1494172
This is an OEM drive, no retail packaging. It will likely come bare in a box. But in my experience they are well packed.
1244059
Mine was new and arrived sooner than i was expected to be deliver, however i bought mine with no HDD (hard drive) because i had an extra... But you could buy it at a local computer store!!! Good luck!!
736333
Frequently, larger companies who resell them will spend the time and money to certify the drives and extend the drive warranty as part of their package. If you think about the reverse case, this is why you can't take a drive off the street and throw it into your enterprise storage array and expect the array manufacturer to support it as a "certified" configuration. In the past two years, I've purchased a half dozen HGST/Hitachi drives. One DOA, and the others all going strong.
1308907
I can't speak for my experience with hard drives on Amazon, but I've dealt with other items I wanted to order that were under review and they were only unavailable for a few days. Also, a certain hardware website named after an item a chicken produces has these drives for the same price right now, if you're dead set on this drive. A lot of us have had bad experiences with them, so I am not comfortable advising people to take the risk, but it seems more people have had success than failure. And of course, Amazon has a decent return policy so you can put the drive through its paces and return it if they have problems, if you're willing to do so. Good luck!
1894889
I just checked www.wdc.com Typed in Serial Number from drive I received. Answer from WD: "The warranty for this product has expired. The product is not eligible for replacement. If you need technical assistance, please send us email." So either Seller is warranting this drive OR NO ONE IS!!! I, for one, would like to hear from the seller on this matter!
926434
Although I don't own this particular drive, I am here as I am looking to buy this one also to add to my two other Seagate 500gb Freeagents that I already have that have been working flawlessly for me for over 12 months now. I honestly think that your experience was most likely caused by a faulty unit. Without knowing your computer configuration (windows, mac or linux) it's hard to say if any extra steps would need to be taken to set it up, but for a windows or linux based pc it should be simply plug and play in my experience. As you see on this site, there is only one bad review of the product. If you think about how many of these must get sold every year, one bad review is pretty good as almost everybody will take the time to complain, but very few will come back to write a positive review as a working product is what most people expect. So I guess the short answer from me is yes, I would give this drive a second chance, but then again, i may be biased by my great experience. I hope that this is of some help to you..
611278
A.J., Thanks for your post, I have just done the same thing and it works a treat. My Mac picked up the Seagate drive on the desktop with no bother. Seems like the case and heat issues are letting Seagate down here.F
1431153
The device I bought was from LaCie, which is currently at the Seagate lab right now because they're attempting to recover my data. I don't know if LaCie's a part of Seagate or not. I'm assuming it is. I wish I could tell you more.
1995473
Hi D. Petitpas,I was wondering if anyone would ever reply to my post. I didn't know that these drives were shipped pre-formated and I don't think that it is listed in it's description here on Amazon. Thank you so very much for setting me straight!