Seagate & Western Digital Slashing Warranties

[sholling]

I can only assume that so many of their drives are dieing an early death that they can no longer afford to stand behind them.

Seagate and Western Digital cutting hard drive warranties in 2012 | The Verge

Two major hard drive manufacturers, Seagate and Western Digital, are cutting their warranties to as little as one year. Starting on December 31st, Seagate will cut protection for most standard desktop and notebook drives from five years to one, and other drives, including its hybrid Momentus XT, will get three-year warranties instead of five-year ones. Meanwhile, Western Digital is reducing the warranties for three of its drives — the Caviar Blue, Caviar Green, and Scorpio Blue — from three years to two,

 

[GlocksRock]

That's just lame, they need to make better qualitiy products.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

One word: Duopoly
No more real competion in hd world, so why bother to compete, then it's more profitabe to agree to not to compete. Warranty lenght is only the first casualty, far from the last

 

[vegascowboy]

haha well the QC out of china is out the window

 

[avnetguy]

I'm not too concerned about the warranties, I just want the prices to go back to the normal (pre-flood) range.

Steve

 

[GlocksRock]

I care about the warranties, they come in very handy when your drive fails and you get another one without having to pay out of pocket.

 

[psbfan9]

I agree with glocksrock. A good warranty is very important. It shows the company has faith in their product(s).

I have been looking for an external HD and reading lots of reviews. From what I have read Hitachi and Samsung are making some good drives.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

From what I have read Hitachi and Samsung are making some good drives.

you got to do a bit more reading :
Western Digital buys Hitachi's storage business for $4.3B | VentureBeat
Seagate buys Samsung storage unit - Business - News - ZDNet Australia

You see now what did I mean in post #3 ?

but yea, Is too much to ask for pre-flood prices and pre-flood 5 year warranties ?? apparently so

 

[sholling]

When you back mechanical products with a 5 year warranty you need to built them well enough to assure that the vast majority live the full 5 years. You just can't make any money if you're replacing 25% of them 1-2 times during that 5 year warranty window. With a 1 year warranty and almost no competition there is little reason to go to the expense of making them robust enough to live longer than 365 days from the date of manufacture - which could easily translate into 3-6 months of actual use. In other words if you think you're seeing high failure rates now you haven't seen anything yet.

 

[GlocksRock]

I seriously can't wait for solid state drives to get much higher in capacity, and lower in price, then we won't have to worry about such high failure rates.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I seriously can't wait for solid state drives to get much higher in capacity, and lower in price, then we won't have to worry about such high failure rates.

I already had to return a failed SSD at work - original manufacturer stopped making them at all and issued a full refund (based on purchase price)

 

[avnetguy]

I care about the warranties, they come in very handy when your drive fails and you get another one without having to pay out of pocket.

I agree that warranties are nice but everyone does pay for them, it's generally built into the sale price. Over the years every major drive maker has produced good and bad drives, some last a long time while others we've had to RMA entire boxes of them within a year.

It just sounds like they are trying to increase their profit margins and with the recent price adjustments it's probably a good business decission to do it now before prices really fall again. I'm sure they will still have the "top-teir" warranty lines which you'll pay more for but if I'm only paying $50 for a 1+TB drive, I'll just buy two.

I also don't think it they will start producing junk based on the warranty change as getting a really bad reputation on drive failures will hurt their overall sales.

Steve

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I also don't think it they will start producing junk based on the warranty change as getting a really bad reputation on drive failures will hurt their overall sales.
Steve

It's a sound theory, however since there only two producers left and both intend to cut warranties - the idea of bad reputation = bad sales might not be true...
It's like everyone hates their Comcast yet you don't see Comcast sales suffering.

 

[sholling]

I already had to return a failed SSD at work - original manufacturer stopped making them at all and issued a full refund (based on purchase price)

I've had one of my SSDs at home die as well. SSDs just haven't proven to be all that reliable yet because they can only be written to so many times. To keep that wear to a minimum I make darn sure that mine only hold the OS and key applications and that all swap files and data are kept on spinners.

I also don't think it they will start producing junk based on the warranty change as getting a really bad reputation on drive failures will hurt their overall sales.

This was true when there were 5 or more companies competing in the mass storage market. If Maxtor produced lemons you could buy Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, or Hitachi. Unfortunately with the market reduced to a duopoly reputation no longer matters so much. I find it highly suspicious that the CEOs from both companies both woke up one morning with the brilliant idea to alienate customers by cutting warranties by 80% and did so completely independently. The next thing that I expect to see is a move to cheaper materials. Why not? It's not like you have much of a choice.

 

[avnetguy]

This was true when there were 5 or more companies competing in the mass storage market. If Maxtor produced lemons you could buy Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, or Hitachi. Unfortunately with the market reduced to a duopoly reputation no longer matters so much. I find it highly suspicious that the CEOs from both companies both woke up one morning with the brilliant idea to alienate customers by cutting warranties by 80% and did so completely independently. The next thing that I expect to see is a move to cheaper materials. Why not? It's not like you have much of a choice.

Well I'm not thinking doom and gloom over a simple warranty structure change and you can still buy drives with a 5 year warranty if you feel the need.

My personal history with hard drives has been good and I've thrown out far more drives due to age/size limitations than those with failures.

Steve

 

[sparky77]

Not impressed with seagate lately anyways, the HD that came in my laptop died after a year and wasnt covered under the computers warranty because it was a refurbished laptop. The second HD from seagate crashed after 2 months, so now I have to send it in for a replacement. Buying maxtor doesn't get you away from the problem because both brands are made in the same factory, I think it's time to start buying western digital or hitatchi.