- Take one bubble packed 2.5-inch hard disk
- Put it into a roughly 10 x 8 x 2.5-inch box
- Do not add any other cushioning or packing material and seal
- Allow the hard disk to bounce around all the way from ‘the norf’ to ‘the sarf’ under postie’s delicate attentions
Update (Weds 2nd September): Disk may be DOA. Now with Paul Silver, who is  trying to determine its health.
Update (Thursday 3rd September): Dabs.com have asked me to fill in a customer satisfaction survey. I have. I’m not happy, so we’ll see if they contact me in response to my comments.
Later, Thursday, Paul reports that the disk isn’t DOA. It’s amazing how much punishment a modern HD can be put through.
Posted via email from The People’s Republic of Worthing Telegraph
Thanks for the info, PRW Telegraph. For a company selling so much IT hardware, that is so unacceptable. Especially a delicate piece of equipment like a 2.5″ hard-drive.
I have bought dozens of hard-drives over the years. I would not accept this shoddy treatment.
I would insist on returning goods and demanding your money back now. Inadequate packing is a good enough reason. You’ll never know if failure is caused.by journey. But you can expect after such treatment a failure well before MTBF. They shouldn’t argue with that.
You shouldn’t wait to find out if any damage done now as they have failed in providing reasonable care of product that requires special treatment.
Or if you want to risk them sending another drive I’d get them to send another drive to you asap.
Good luck.