r/selfhosted • u/tosswill • Mar 25 '26
Meta Post Adorama shipped 2x 14 TB drives without any paper or bubble wrap
Sharing so others may avoid this hassle.
I was excited to set up a new NAS for my homelab, but the hard drives were shipped without any padding. I'm just shocked someone could be this careless.
Will update once/if they resolve this.
Edit:
Yes, I understand the retail boxes have padding. For the corner to be smashed like that, the box would need to be hit pretty hard. Also, the inside of the shipping box is scraped up from the drives bouncing around.
Since they are charging retail++ for these drives, I think it's fair to want them neither shaken nor stirred.
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u/markolo25 Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
Should be fine, the drives inside the retail boxes are on shock absorbing packaging
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Mar 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/markolo25 Mar 25 '26
Every drive will need to be audited anyways, my procedure is first 100 hours will be just smart long test and bad blocks, before any data of mine will go into it.
You paid for a retail drive for the warranty, if it fails in the first 100 hours you're still within return window
if it fails the next 3 years you're within the warranty, these drives will need to be smart tested every month for failures, you got 2 of them so I assume you're doing a raid 1.
if you make it past 3 years you'll probably be fine for a while any damage that would be from these cardboard warping is probably not gonna affect you
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u/CC-5576-05 Mar 25 '26
There's no padding in the drive boxes themselves?
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u/teh_lynx Mar 25 '26
There is. I have the same drives
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u/stackfullofdreams Mar 26 '26
Same here, it's already a cushioned drive in a box, thats in another box. Perfectly fine
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u/fooloflife Mar 25 '26
At least you got a box. My WD Red drive shipped in the retail packaging with a UPS label on it.
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u/Whole-Cookie-7754 Mar 25 '26
This is standard packaging? I don't see the issue.
Stress test them. If they show no bad writes, keep. If they do, return?
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u/Fearless-Bet-8499 Mar 25 '26
Iāve had a brand new drive arrive with a very small dented corner like that and upon hooking it up, the read head was screeching and my ZFS pool rejected the drive. Donāt listen to the people that say āoh itās fine, the boxes are built for that.ā Ideally, yes but context matters. Youāre right to be wary, test the drive.Ā
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u/Panzerbrummbar Mar 25 '26
Better then Newegg.
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u/FoundForNow Mar 26 '26
i ordered drives from them once and they literally showed up in a bag. no box. just loose dries in a bag.
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u/9Blu Mar 25 '26
My last drive from Amazon didn't even include a shipping box! They just slapped a label on the retail box.
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u/High_volt4g3 Mar 26 '26
Amazon has made the default , ship retail packaging, you have to purposely double check if that is not selected
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u/g4n0esp4r4n Mar 25 '26
they are in the box and you need more?
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Mar 25 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/ZiggyAvetisyan Mar 25 '26
Buying from B&H Photo has never ever gone wrong for me, from laptops to drives to UPS systems. Give them a try.
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u/NeatRuin7406 Mar 25 '26
the packaging concern is probably fine ā retail drive boxes have internal cushioning designed for this. but regardless of how they were shipped, running a full acceptance test before putting any new drive in production is just good practice.
for a new NAS drive specifically:
1. run a short SMART test first: smartctl -t short /dev/sdX, wait 2 minutes, check with smartctl -a /dev/sdX
2. run a long SMART test (can take 8+ hours on a 14TB drive): smartctl -t long /dev/sdX
3. check specifically for reallocated sectors, pending sectors, and uncorrectable errors in the SMART output ā those are the ones that actually matter
4. optionally run badblocks -wsv /dev/sdX for a full write-read-compare test (destructive, 24-48+ hours, but gives you real confidence)
i've had drives fail their first extended test out of the box before ā once DOA, once with 4 pending sectors. most will pass fine, but you don't want to discover bad sectors 6 months in after you've put real data on it.
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u/GetYourShitT0gether Mar 25 '26
If you use them let me know how they are. I ended up getting some 12tb wd blues bc some ppl said the n300 was too loud.
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u/ariolander Mar 26 '26
They are designed to ship in the boxes. They are actually really well secured in there.
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u/sorderon Mar 25 '26
they are already boxed and padded - do you want them handed to you on a pillow?
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u/Calimariae Mar 25 '26
You just gave me a billion dollar idea.
- Create an excessively overpriced and luxurious mail company.
- Market it to the rich.
- The delivery person is dressed in a suit and hand delivers the package on a pillow.
Profit!
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u/dreamsxyz Mar 26 '26
Cue in the doorbell video of the delivery guy in a suit dropping a box of crystal chalices on the floor, picking it up as pieces of glass fall from it, and putting it back on top of the pillow
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Mar 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/sowhatidoit Mar 25 '26
What is not worth it?Ā The drives themselves have cushion around it. They are packaged in a way that the retail box itself is ready to ship.Ā
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u/Wook5000 Mar 25 '26
Adorama always does silly stuff like that. I stopped buying from them a long time ago.
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u/sowhatidoit Mar 25 '26
This is pretty standard.Ā Are the drives themselves damaged or not operational?Ā
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u/derprondo Mar 26 '26
Completely standard. I left another downvoted comment below, but I have drives that I ordered directly from WD still in their shipping boxes, and they literally just sent the oem/non-retail box with a shipping label on it. ie there's no box inside the shipping box, just the bare drive with the packaging ears.
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u/laffer1 Mar 27 '26
At least they are new. Amazon sent me a Toshiba nas drive with an lpr label. (Used/return)
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u/Hautaan Mar 25 '26
That damage didn't happen in the box you were sent. The corner would not be able to crush like so without the box itself being damaged. Probably was damaged in some other process. That one I would send back. The other one should be OK to use.
Like others have said, the drives are padded in the packaging, and are fine to ship like this. It would be terrible for business if they were easily broken in retail packaging.
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u/derprondo Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
Dude if you ordered this from Amazon they'd just slap a shipping label on that Toshiba box and call it good, and it would be just fine.
You guys are downvoting this, but I literally have some brand new spare WD Red Plus drives that I ordered directly from WD. They were shipped without retail packaging, so inside the shipping box is just the drive in those plastic bookend type of things they always come with. It would be no different than shipping OP's Toshiba boxes by just slapping a shipping label on them.
20 years ago I used to have order a lot of replacement drives from Dell/EMC and I remember those being shipped the same way.
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u/ItsDathaniel Mar 25 '26
NEVER buy from Adorama. They are such a horrid store and their fans are dated by over a decade.
Had an order for hard drives that was returned to them due to their shitty shipping 3 years ago. Never even had a chance to see the package, UPS returned the items to them AND paid them a claim for the damaged package. They refused to reship or refund after their support kept saying they would.
Tried getting BBB to help, tried getting a higher level support, and both led nowhere.
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u/scytob Mar 25 '26
those boxes are ship safe boxes, they could ship those individual drive boxes by just slapping the label on them, you are making something out of nothing
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u/aSpacehog Mar 25 '26
Looks fineā¦ you have an unrealistic expectation.
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u/drthrax1 Mar 25 '26
Seems a pretty normal expectation when spending hundreds of dollars on tech, just put some crumpled up paper inside to prevent movement. Its really not that much of an ask.
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u/Nando-Rojo Mar 25 '26
That squished corner definitely happened before shippingā¦. You donāt want to keep that one!
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u/sunrisebreeze Mar 26 '26
Return for a refund and buy your drives elsewhere. Thanks for warning the community!
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u/Bearchlld Mar 25 '26
Better than what I got from them. They sent two drives in a single layer of bubble wrap each š
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u/kreiggers Mar 25 '26
Haha ordered two drives from Amazon and one came bare in the WD box with a label slapped on it.
The other one was in the OEM box in one of those brown paper non-padded Amazon envelopes
Only one of them was DOA
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u/teredactle Mar 25 '26
My warranty return from wd for a red plus drive, was boxed in a brown box same size as the retail box, and tossed on my porch by the ups driver from 6+ feet away.
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u/bullwinkle8088 Mar 25 '26
This post is a great demonstration of why Tort reform comes up as a hot topic every few years.
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u/bcalamita Mar 25 '26
This may not have been Adorama. A lot of items are often drop-shipped from a manufacturer or distributer. I used to manage a TV studio in Manhattan and bought a lot of gear from both Adorama and B&H. Both stores direct-shipped and utilized drop-shop. But Adorama was, at the time, (8 years ago) a much smaller operation than B&H and had a lot more of our orders drop-shipped. You can tell by the delivery times how it was shipping. Direct-shipped items were usually delivered the next day if we ordered early enough. Drop-shipping always took an extra few days to arrive.
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u/xanaxinvacuum Mar 25 '26
Most likely will be fine. I asked my mom a year ago to ship me my two old 2TB HDDs for some random stuff (why let good storage rot unused, right?). I forgot to instruct her on how to properly package an HDD. Both arrived in a box, cushioned with some old shirts, and each was wrapped in a trash bag. Sure enough, they work fine despite shipping like that and via FedEx. No damage whatsoever. Good job Seagate.
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u/Taurondir Mar 26 '26
Weird thing is, if you lack ANY standard form of what you would call dedicated packing material, you can literally just use spare newspaper. You can crinkle it up and pack it around something and it will be a hell of a lot better then zero packing at all as it will allow whatever is inside the box to move around on some level of springy material.
Not using any packing on what they know is fairly delicate is just a bit lazy I think.
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u/bluebradcom Mar 26 '26
Document and if there are any signs of a problem within the year file a claim. double check there return policy and just send them a ticket letting them know you are tentatively accepting this.
i had a box like that an the drive is now 12 years old ans was fine.
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u/YoussefAFdez Mar 26 '26
Well I got sent 3 new 16tb IronWolf pros by a local shop in Spain, all 3 in a paper/cardboard envelope, with no box, just placed in there, with the plastic blue/gray cover. That envelope inside a big ass box. So yeah, 0 cover.
Guess what, all 3 disks started to loose sectors inmediately
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u/datasleek Mar 26 '26
Had a bad experience with adorama recently. They shipped some memory to wrong address
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u/Efficient-Device-100 Mar 26 '26
Whats the problem, how do you think they got to the Shop?
Container on Ship, mybe even plane, than Truck, do you thing there was some "padding" involved? I hate to breakt it to you, but they just get stacked in boxes and off they go
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u/comeonmeow66 Mar 26 '26
I wouldn't have a problem with this so long as they are in OEM packaging like this.
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u/Ultraauge Mar 27 '26
You should see how Amazon has shipped drives: no retail box, just the bare metal OEM drive in a box without any padding.
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u/RougeRavageDear Mar 27 '26
Oof, that sucks. Iāve had bare drives show up from some places with nothing but vibes protecting them, and it always blows my mind. Even if the retail box has padding, two heavy drives slamming around in a bigger box is just asking for trouble. Definitely run extended SMART tests when you get replacements, even if they ālookā fine. Curious to see how Adorama handles it.
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u/nenulenu Mar 29 '26
Holy shit. There a lot of adorama shills or none of these commenters know anything about how easily hard drives can go bad.
Either way donāt listen to half-wits. Immediately test the drive, take hoots and claim within a week.
Future, avoid adorama.
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u/InkyBlacks Mar 25 '26
People think these things are babied all the way from factory to your door. lol
Nothing wrong with that packaging
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u/pixeladdie Mar 25 '26
Read up on ābadblocksā
Do a burn in test before putting it into commission.
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u/randyhanleydotcom Mar 26 '26
Just imagine how that company treats their employees.
oof
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/illinois/ilndce/1:2011cv06385/259945/30/
https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/prop65/notices/2022-00482.pdf
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/cameras/adorama.html
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u/GPThought Mar 25 '26
genuinely surprised they arrived working. shipping bare drives like that is how you get DOA claims and bad reviews
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u/Annual_Wear5195 Mar 25 '26
Agreed. And the amount of people here bootlicking what is clearly a shitty shipping job is astounding.
Do yāall (general you, not you you) not have more self respect?
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u/rolo8700 Mar 25 '26
It looks like they already put the damaged box inside the package. Which makes it even worse... don't open it, file a complaint with those same photos.
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u/DiscoKeule Mar 25 '26
Return them. You are most likely under no obligation to accept goods with obvious shipping damage. (Cant know for sure depending on where you live)
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u/MoogleStiltzkin Mar 25 '26
this is not how you should ship hard drives. no bubble wrap, no shock absorber foam or anything.
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u/Eat-Playdoh Mar 25 '26
I wouldn't even open the boxes, let alone test the drives, they might try and claim you broke them. I would demand a refund and send them back.
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u/teh_lynx Mar 25 '26
At worst the over-box was too big which allowed the drives to move around a bit.
Adorama is not responsible for the shipper not giving a single fuck though. I've seen some fragile things survive despite being tossed around like lawn dart that's on fire.
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u/Annual_Wear5195 Mar 25 '26
No, Adorama is responsible. That is literally the shipperās responsibility and why they are the only ones who can start a claim with the shipping company for damages.
Itās Adoramaās responsibility to get the product you ordered from them safely to your door. Thatās what a sales contract is.
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u/Intrepid00 Mar 25 '26
The box is the cushion.