Yes, THREW. I heard a thud as it hit my door and it was loud enough to get my dog barking.
Thanks delivery person, very cool. I hope that when someone else is delivering your expensive fragile items, they’re gentle with it so you don’t have to go through the anxiety of not knowing whether the hard drive you bought SPECIFICALLY as a long term offline backup might be damaged and unreliable before a single file has been backed up to it.
Like, if it was straight up broken after this, that would be preferable because if it breaks in a year or so, not only do you lose your data (potentially finding out only after your server’s main drive also broke and you’re trying to recover from your backup), and the website won’t refund you because they won’t believe that it broke because the person who delivered it mishandled it.
So again, thank you delivery person for making my digital life that much spicier for no reason. Hope you enjoyed those extra two seconds you saved knowing it’s not your hard drive or data. Also thank you for not even ringing my doorbell presumably because you didn’t want to be confronted by the new owner of the product you potentially broke. Or maybe you wanted to give the package thieves a fair chance at getting it before I did.
Incidentally, does anyone know how I can check the drive for potential damage? I’m currently doing a SMART long test which says it will take over 24 hours. How good is SMART at detecting physical damage as opposed to the drive aging?
I’ve had a perfectly fine experience with two drives I bought, and don’t know if it’s because they were premium products, but based on this I would still recommend Ironwolf Pro. It’s a shame that online shopping has to be such a tedious gamble, as some sellers are diabolical; marketplace hosts are often just another layer of defense for the seller and be for the buyer; and buyers have no chance of prevention against bad couriers. We should at least be allowed to whitelist and blacklist certain couriers from being used to ship stuff we buy.
I personally prefer to go for more expensive drives (not for the price but it’s a constant correlation) because of the increased reliability and expected respect around trading a more valuable product. As a result I even choose Ironwolf over Barracuda. I’m not sure if this mutual respect is the reason for my experience purchasing, but both Ironwolf Pro drives I purchased came in a specifically designed box with cardboard kind of stabilising packing, so they sit rigid in the centre of the box. I trust that a more premium delivery option also results in a higher paid courier, who can afford to do the job properly and with pride. This isn’t necessarily the case, and relies on the seller being a good seller.