Wow, that sucks.I didn’t realise they were bad at shipping even back then.

In my experience, Newegg used to be good but they’re pretty bad now. I only bought a drive from them because it was cheap.

ServerPartDeals’ packaging was good. They had the drive wrapped in bubble wrap, in a small box just the right size for the drive, then that box was wrapped in a lot of bubble wrap and placed in a larger box.

B&H’s was the best though. The inner box was exactly the right size and they used pieces of flexible plastic on each side of the HDD to hold it and essentially make it ‘float’ in the middle of the box, ensuring the hard drive never directly touches the walls of the box (and thus never receives any shocks directly). This box had some padding in it too. This inner box was then tightly wrapped in bubble wrap and placed into another box.

B&H also sometimes have retail drives for the same price as OEM drives. These are great because they come in a regular retail box instead of just the drive itself (so it’s pretty much guaranteed that it’s packed properly), and often come with a free SATA cable.