question: does newegg... get lower quality hard drives?

[jtvang125]

Originally posted by: cubby1223

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Xavier434
No. It doesn't make any sense at all. How would this sort of business practice help WD or any hardware company for that matter?

Because they could sell the lower quality ones to consumer market and sell the high quality ones for server/midrange/mainframe storage at a much higher cost.

Yeah they devote more resources to those lines, but those systems would use SCSI, not IDE. Hence irrelevant to the topic of the thread.

If anything, the big OEM manufacturers get the crap drives, they are more often a lot noisier and a lot slower that drives given to retailers.

OEM or retailer they're all getting the same drives. There may be a difference between them on how they handle the drives once they get them though.

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: I4AT
How exactly does one test for the "quality" of a hard drive? I would assume there are two options, either it works or it doesn't.

lol, I was thinking the same. Like there is someone at the end of the line with a big red rubber stamp that takes a good long look at each one and stamps an occasional one with "LOW-QUALITY".

 

[TwiceOver]

<--- Looks at his stack of drives from Newegg...

They seem to be working fine. Either way the lowest warranty is what 3yrs? Chances are you'll be trading up by then anyway.

 

[funkymatt]

I work for a major hard drive manufacturer. I can confirm that the OEMs (Dell, HP, Apple) get the better "prime" parts. The retail and oem (bare drive only) drives still go through numerous checks and balances, however, and should not affect their performance.

 

[SAWYER]

I for one blame George Bush

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Xavier434
No. It doesn't make any sense at all. How would this sort of business practice help WD or any hardware company for that matter?

Because they could sell the lower quality ones to consumer market and sell the high quality ones for server/midrange/mainframe storage at a much higher cost.

But you can already buy the exact same models from online stores like Newegg that you can get inside of the Dell servers. New is new so there is no difference in quality. Even if there is a QA test for each drive, I am sure that the test is completely automated and is either Pass/Fail. They don't scale the quality from 1-10.

 

[sdifox]

It's not newegg. Your friend is blacklisted so that when he orders a drive from any retailer, no matter which brand/model, they'll ship him a lemon.

 

[Gothgar]

Originally posted by: cubby1223

Originally posted by: Citrix
a co-workers brother works for western-digital here in boulder and he told me that online stores get the bottom of the barrel quality when it comes to hard drives and is why online stores like newegg can sell them so cheap.

i dunno if this is true but it may explan why the hard drives i get from newegg have a higher failure rate for me.

I call BS. Online retailers are able to sell drives cheaper because they don't have to maintain store locations, inventory, and employees nation-wide.

this

 

[Electric Amish]

Somebody still needs to tell me how you can determine the difference in quality of two identical drives...

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Electric Amish
Somebody still needs to tell me how you can determine the difference in quality of two identical drives...

testing at the end or during production. The better platters get put in the higher priced stuff.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Electric Amish
Somebody still needs to tell me how you can determine the difference in quality of two identical drives...

testing at the end or during production. The better platters get put in the higher priced stuff.

Yes, but the test results are pass/fail so that doesn't really make sense.

 

[Oyeve]

Now, I know once I hit REPLY one of my HDs is gonna fail tonight, BUT, in my 25+ years buidling pcs and buying untold number of HDs I have never had one fail, die, blow up, run away on me unless I intentionally broke it. Like when Samsung made their first HD and I wanted to see how reliable it was compare to the then king of the hill WD drive, so I had em both running and dropped them 6 inches on my table. Samsung lived WD died instantly. Anyway, back to OP, sounds like its "possible" but I doubt it. I think we see more failure rates from online retailers because of too much shipping. IE, NE buys a shit load of drives, they ship from where ever to NE, you order drive, NE ships to you. Now thats 2 shippings and one repacking. Dell, HP and others order from HD makers, pops into PC and ships you PC. Yes, 2 shippings also but the HD in the pc is bettter protected because getting an OEM drive from NE is basically POS box, some popcorn strewn about and a monkey in brown UPS pants literally throws it on the truck, tosses it around like its a ball several time before he delivers it to you. Hence the higher (not proven) fail rate.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I like my beer from the bottom of the barrel!

 

[hoihtah]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Now, I know once I hit REPLY one of my HDs is gonna fail tonight, BUT, in my 25+ years buidling pcs and buying untold number of HDs I have never had one fail, die, blow up, run away on me unless I intentionally broke it. Like when Samsung made their first HD and I wanted to see how reliable it was compare to the then king of the hill WD drive, so I had em both running and dropped them 6 inches on my table. Samsung lived WD died instantly. Anyway, back to OP, sounds like its "possible" but I doubt it. I think we see more failure rates from online retailers because of too much shipping. IE, NE buys a shit load of drives, they ship from where ever to NE, you order drive, NE ships to you. Now thats 2 shippings and one repacking. Dell, HP and others order from HD makers, pops into PC and ships you PC. Yes, 2 shippings also but the HD in the pc is bettter protected because getting an OEM drive from NE is basically POS box, some popcorn strewn about and a monkey in brown UPS pants literally throws it on the truck, tosses it around like its a ball several time before he delivers it to you. Hence the higher (not proven) fail rate.

well, i guess you passed over that whole IBM "death"star series.
i had 4 of those 60-80GB ide drives.
all ended up as paper weights.
some within weeks, none lived past a year.