Date   : Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:27:14 +0100
From   : robert@... (Rob)
Subject: OT Only Connect

>> Now you pretty much have to pay ?20 for a "Seagate approved"
>> cardboard box and packing foam, or risk having them deny your RMA...

On 04/09/2009, Jim Hearne <jim@...> wrote:
>
> Which is silly given that new hard drives i buy generally arrive in
> nothing more than a jiffy bag floating around in a larger box with the
> motherboard, video card and whatever else you have ordered with it.

Well that's dealers for you... most don't care about the stock. Throw
it at you fast enough and it's then your problem if it goes wrong.

It's a few years a since I've had to send a disc back to seagate, but
I've made sure to keep a couple of the boxes that the returned ones
come in, in the attic.  They are ittle more than little plastic
clamshells to put the drive in, and cardboard moulded ends to suspend
it in the middle of the box.  Very different to the boxes they
specified to send stuff TO them in.  But, with seagate branding all
over them, I wouldn't anticipate any problems using them..

I've also got a box I snagged from work that will take about a dozen
drives!  Thankfully I've not had that many fail at the same time.  My
last problems used to be with early Seagate 100GB drives .. Oh, and a
500GB SATA but that was DOA so I just took that one straight back to
where I got it from.

The worst ever drives I have encountered were Fujitsu 1GB ones,
Struggling to remember the model number now, but I think we had every
single one we sold come back to haunt us.  Typically they would fail
with the BIOS telling us it was a "F J T U  M 1 ,," whatever ...
losing every second byte, even on the interrogation..  Just the one
particular model, but it's caused me to distrust anything of theirs
ever since.