Bulk Hard drive packaging ?

[Cifer]

Hi,

I recently went to a local shop to buy a hard drive (Seagate Barracuda), but the seller was not selling the drives in their regular packaging, rather he was selling individual units from a box of 30 drives (bulk).
Those drives were not wrapped in plastic (unlike their regular retail counterparts), so I didn't buy the drive ;

Did he try to finesse me by selling me refurbished/used drives as new, or do they come without a plastic wrap (anti-static bag?) when in bulk?

What I was expecting :


Thank you for your time,
Have a nice day

[minibois]

2 minutes ago, Cifer said:

I recently went to a local shop to buy a hard drive (Seagate Barracuda), but the seller was not selling the drives in their regular packaging, rather he was selling individual units from a box of 30 drives (bulk).

What I was expecting :

The way you have shown in the picture is how I would expect them to arrive.

I've only ever seen drives (from WD, Seagate and Toshiba at the very least) in those individual antistatic bags that came in a box with styrofoam like this:

The styrofoam being there to mitigate shocks during transport, the antistatic bags to make sure there is no static electricity release into the drives.

5 minutes ago, Cifer said:

Did he try to finesse me by selling me refurbished/used drives as new, or do they come without a plastic wrap (anti-static bag?) when in bulk?

Of course it's possible this is from a different vendor or whatever, but I would always expect drives to come packed like shown above.

[Prodigy_Smit]

7 minutes ago, Cifer said:

Did he try to finesse me by selling me refurbished/used drives as new, or do they come without a plastic wrap (anti-static bag?) when in bulk?

You could buy it from him and ask if you can return. If he says yes then go to your pc and check the SMART info and check powered on hours. If the hours are more than 10 then return the drive because they are most likely not new.

[SupaKomputa]

That's pretty normal, HDD usually sold like that with just the antistatic bag.

In fact i never encountered HDD sold in a box.

 

You actually can see wether the HDD is new or used.

All HDD kept it's running time in SMART value.

[ProjectBox153]

You can check the S.M.A.R.T. data of the drive to see how many times it has been powered on and how many hours it has been running if you do decide to buy one. 

[Cifer]

50 minutes ago, minibois said:

The way you have shown in the picture is how I would expect them to arrive.

I've only ever seen drives (from WD, Seagate and Toshiba at the very least) in those individual antistatic bags that came in a box with styrofoam like this:

The styrofoam being there to mitigate shocks during transport, the antistatic bags to make sure there is no static electricity release into the drives.

Of course it's possible this is from a different vendor or whatever, but I would always expect drives to come packed like shown above.

I think you hit the nail on the head ; A quick google search shows wrapped hdds only, regardless of the brand ;
=> He most likely tried to scam me ;
Thanks for the input, much appreciated !



 

46 minutes ago, Smit Devrukhkar said:

You could buy it from him and ask if you can return. If he says yes then go to your pc and check the SMART info and check powered on hours. If the hours are more than 10 then return the drive because they are most likely not new.

 

45 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

That's pretty normal, HDD usually sold like that with just the antistatic bag.

In fact i never encountered HDD sold in a box.

 

You actually can see wether the HDD is new or used.

All HDD kept it's running time in SMART value.

 

39 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

You can check the S.M.A.R.T. data of the drive to see how many times it has been powered on and how many hours it has been running if you do decide to buy one. 

Thank you guys, that's a good thing to know ;
I'll probably never set foot in his shop again, as I'm almost certain he tried to scam me (he did other weird things that lead me to believe he was not genuine, but that's off-topic), therefore I won't need to verify his statement ; Yet it is cool to know there is such a feature, thank you for the tip !

Thank you all for your help (much appreciated!)
Have a nice day !