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The cruel joke: Seagate RMAs

Wednesday, 30 January 2008 hd rant rma

Last year while moving to Linux, one of my 300gig disks from the just-broken-up RAID5 array decided it was time to call it a day and died. It’s within warranty but that doesn’t mean that much when the support is run by Seagate.

So here I am. I’ve got my broken disk. I want to send it to Seagate for replacement so I can boost my local storage quite significantly (300 gigs is not something you turn your nose up at) but there’s one nasty snag holding me up: packaging.

Seagate Packaging Diagram

Their packing instructions state:

Drives must be places in SeaShell (plastic clamshell) prior to packing in carton.

I’m not joking when I say that these have to be some of the hardest things to find on the internet. I would wager that it’s easier to buy heroin than find one of these. It’s just insane.

I’m almost thinking this could be a ploy to cancel all their warranty commitments that they took on when they bought Maxtor. Maxtors were sent out in sealed anti-static bags in foam containers so their customers will never have access to these mythical clamshells.

The offending drive

So, do you know where I might find an anti-static clammshell?