Some WD and Seagate Warranty Changes for 2012

L

lnical

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We just received notice from my company's supplier that warranties are changing for both Seagate and some Western Digital Hard Drives

Link to the Seagate Letter posted else where: Seagate Updates

Notice I received:

Western Digital – Effective date on January 2nd, 2012.
Desktop and Mobile (Blue and Green family lines) change from 3 years to 2 years. Black product line will remain at 5 years warranty. Enterprise class products stay at 5 years warranty.

Product Line Limited Warranty Period
(as of January 02, 2012)
Desktop & Mobile – WD Blue and WD Green 2 years

Seagate – Effective date on December 31, 2011.
Major Desktop and Mobile products change from 2 years to 1 years and 5 years to 3 years. Most of the Enterprise class product will be reduced warranty period from 5 years to 3 years.

Product Line Limited Warranty Period
(as of December 31, 2011)
Constellation®.2 and Constellation® ES.2 3 years
Barracuda® and Barracuda® Green 3.5” Drives 1 year
Barracuda® XT 3 years
Momentus® 2.5” Drives (5400 RPM & 7200 RPM) 1 year
Momentus® XT 3 years
SV35 Series™ - Video Surveillance 2 years
Pipeline HD® Mini, Pipeline HD® 2 years
Click to expand...

FYI.

lnical
 
yeah for blacks but i feel sorry for the environmental hdd's out there that lose 1 year of warranty.

but still has anyone rma'd and come up with a non refurbed drive or has even attempted to RMA
 
I think Seagate is off my list of options, especially since they're dumping the Green drives.

Too bad Samsung got out of the HDD market.
 
They never recovered from that bad thing they ate.

(maxtor)
 
The really don't know how to take care of public relations. I'm disappointing about the WD greens. I think blacks are dieing in demand. SSD + Greens is the way of the future.
 
Bloody hell. 1 year is... nasty. Looks like more of the drives we buy will be WD :S
 
DeFex said:
They never recovered from that bad thing they ate.

(maxtor)
Click to expand...

That's rather odd - I still have a Maxtor 6LS200 from their early SATA days still in service (DiamondMax 8 SATA-150 - manufactured in May 2004); it's the only non-WD SATA HDD I've ever owned (and one of only two non-WD HDDs of any interface - shows you how loyal I've been to WD over the years). If anything, Seagate in the more pedestrian sub-TB capacities had a *worse* reputation than Maxtor, though not as bad as Hitachi (formerly IBM GST - now headed off to WD).
 
silk186 said:
The really don't know how to take care of public relations. I'm disappointing about the WD greens. I think blacks are dieing in demand. SSD + Greens is the way of the future.
Click to expand...

That is because the Greens are far cheaper in terms of price per GB/TB than Blacks - the difference in price is large enough that adding an SSD (especially with Intel RST) can make up the performance gap without breaking the wallet. The larger-capacity Greens aren't *that* much slower (I'm referring to 500 GB and larger) - I have a 500GB Eco-Green from the GP-AV line (the bargain-basement of the Eco-Greens - it's intended as a replacement/upgrade drive for DVRs, such as Tivos) that I've been using as a *boot drive* since my switch to Windows 7 x64 (at RC) - about as far afield from its intended purpose as it gets. And it's Seagate (not WD) that is killing off their line of "green" HDDs (that they inherited from Maxtor). The warranty reduction on the Green/Blue lines from WD is not surprising, either - warranty length on "everyday" tech products has been declining steadily - and the Green/Blue lines are the general-purpose (Blue) and low-end (Green) WD lines in any case. Note that the warranty on the high end (Black and Enterprise) remains untouched at five years.
 
as i predicted, we will be referring to drives as pre or post flood models and there will be differences
 
Thanks for the heads up, will definitely be effecting what is bought in the future.
 
My SSD to HDD ratio is like 5 or 6 to 1. I use SSDs because I want to, and HDDs because I must.

I was able to get a Seagate 2TB USB3.0 drive for $99 two weeks ago at Best Buy of all places. I'm not sticking any more HDDs in my systems if I can help it.

I'm not sure which drive is inside, but it's fast and quiet. It was purchased to replace an older 1TB external WD (a couple-years old WD Black). It was loud as hell and got just as hot. Quite is mandatory, but speed really isn't. For my purposes, using platter storage in conjunction with SSDs, speed only has to be fast enough.



The fact that the Seagate Flex Desk is quiet is a plus, but it's pretty intelligent about when to spin down . So I agree that WDs drives are probably better... but when HDD prices are at their highest you can't always get picky. I'd much rather spend the money on SSDs myself. I got three awesome deals on SSDs for the price one 2TB Seagate that's more expensive outside of the USB3 enclosure.
 
jwcalla said:
True... but I think Seagate made their decision before the flooding disaster stuff.
Click to expand...

Which makes that decision even more idiotic. Seriously, enterprise drive warranty reduced to 3 years? From 5 years?

Are they getting out of the HD business 10 years from now? Or is it something else they're not telling us?


EDIT:

I wonder if they're looking to get out of retail further down the road, and concentrate on the OEM market? That's the only thing I can think of that makes sense; OEM warranties are not their direct concern.
 
Man, that year really sucks in the storage universe. I usually sell my drives used on eBay after 1 year with a good argument : there is plenty of warranty left.

I only buy the cheapest ones, so currently it's green drives (that will be replaced by barracudas at Seagate).

That means that I can now only buy from WD, and may have to change my strategy anyway, 2 years is really not that much.
 
How will this effect Samsung drives if Seagate now owns their HDD division? It's coming time to expand my NAS to raid6/more storage....Seagate was never in the question and I planned on some Samsung 2tb f4s, but if I'm going to get screwed on warranty then I guess I'll be sticking to WD.
 
Wait, do these reduction affect the HDs already purchased? Or, are they talking about reductions from 5 years to 3 years for *newly purchased HDs*?
 
ugly said:
Wait, do these reduction affect the HDs already purchased? Or, are they talking about reductions from 5 years to 3 years for *newly purchased HDs*?
Click to expand...

I believe they mean newly purchased drives with the new warranties, not pre-bought drives.

If they did, that would be pretty lame.
 
According to ZDNet UK this kicks in on the 31st for Seagate and on January 2 for Western Digital. Anything bought before those dates should be unaffected.

Bloody hell...guess I'm picking up a couple of extra 2TB drives sometime in the next ten days...
 
Redshirt #24 said:
According to ZDNet UK this kicks in on the 31st for Seagate and on January 2 for Western Digital. Anything bought before those dates should be unaffected.

Bloody hell...guess I'm picking up a couple of extra 2TB drives sometime in the next ten days...
Click to expand...

At current prices? Not a good idea...you'd be much better off waiting until you need them. Once the supply issue settles out you'll be able to by two drives for today's price and then just maintain your own spares rather than cry over a lost year of warranty.

The only reason to buy a drive today is because you actually need it today and have no other good options.
 
dangbrandon said:
yeah for blacks but i feel sorry for the environmental hdd's out there that lose 1 year of warranty.

but still has anyone rma'd and come up with a non refurbed drive or has even attempted to RMA
Click to expand...

I rma'd a WD 2TB Green a few weeks ago. Got a new replacement a few days later.
I guess it's new, doesn't say Refurb on it and was made Oct 6 2011 in Thailand.
 
Remember when ALL desktop drives had 5 year warranties? Those were the days...
 
Redshirt #24 said:
According to ZDNet UK this kicks in on the 31st for Seagate and on January 2 for Western Digital. Anything bought before those dates should be unaffected.

Bloody hell...guess I'm picking up a couple of extra 2TB drives sometime in the next ten days...
Click to expand...

PigLover said:
At current prices? Not a good idea...you'd be much better off waiting until you need them. Once the supply issue settles out you'll be able to by two drives for today's price and then just maintain your own spares rather than cry over a lost year of warranty.

The only reason to buy a drive today is because you actually need it today and have no other good options.
Click to expand...

They are announcing this now to give people a reason to buy drives at high prices!
 
The 5 year warranty is the only reason I only purchased Seagate for work and home. This is SHITTY Seagate.
 
Xeth said:
Remember when ALL desktop drives had 5 year warranties? Those were the days...
Click to expand...

When was that? I remember 1 year warranties, if you were lucky, for most of the 90s, except Fujitsu might've been 2 or 3 years. Late 90s WD pushed it up to 3 and most of the rest followed suit. And then later WD pushed it up to 5, first on Raptors then various enterprise models, and most recently WD blacks.
 
Early to mid 2000's IBM's were 5 year standard, so were Seagates IIRC
 
I'd forgotten about IBM... still have nightmares... ok not really. One of my most significant data losses occurred when I lost a 40gb deathstar. But I did own 6.4gb, 8.4gb, and like 18.2gb IBMs, that I got great usage and performance from. I don't remember the warranties being 5 years though. One of those 3 did arrive DOA, and IBM promptly replaced it.

The wikipedia article on Deathstars reports them as having a 3 year warranty, at the time the class action suit was launched, which was late 2001. Maybe the 5 year warranty was post Deathstar? Part of what made the whole Deathstar thing so annoying, was that up until that model line, IBM made some of the best drives around.

As for Seagate, I was never really a fan, and then they bought Maxtor, and I was really not a fan. So didn't pay attention to their warranties. But I could swear they followed WD on the warranty increase, not the other way around. I found this, which states that their 5 year warranties didn't start until 2004: http://5yrwarranty.seagatestorage.com/?elqPURLPage=540. So I guess they did pull ahead of WD for a while.

I bought a bunch of 250gb WD2500JD Western Digitals in the 2004-2005 period, and know they all had 3 year warranties, I replaced 2 or 3 of them over their warranty period.

Found this article stating everyone but IBM planned to go to 1 year in late 2002: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic2546.html

I think there was a lot of backlash against that plan, and after one of them backed out, the rest followed suit.

So, nope I still don't remember a golden age when all desktop/consumer drives had 5 year warranties. But I'll grant that Seagate, and maybe IBM had 5 year warranties in the mid 2ks.
 
Xeth said:
Remember when ALL desktop drives had 5 year warranties? Those were the days...
Click to expand...

I've got around 20 Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB , between 3 to 3.5 years old. A good chunk of them have hundreds of reallocated sectors, so I plan a big RMA. If I buy new Seagate HDDs in January, they'll have less warranty left when new than those old drives !
 
movdx said:
What is going on with samsung hdds warranty?
Click to expand...

Seagate has been in the process of buying Samsung's HDD division over the past year. So in theory there will be no more Samsung HDDs, and whatever tech survives will have Seagate warranties.

https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=samsung+seagate

In related news, WD has been in the process of buying Hitachi's HDD division for about the same time period.

https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=western+digital+hitachi
 
Aesma said:
I've got around 20 Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB , between 3 to 3.5 years old. A good chunk of them have hundreds of reallocated sectors, so I plan a big RMA. If I buy new Seagate HDDs in January, they'll have less warranty left when new than those old drives !
Click to expand...

Reallocated sectors are a godsend compared to the 7200.11's original problems. We had almost 25 go bad in a 2 week period because of the defective SD17 firmware (Before Seagate blessed us with the SD19, which bricked another dozen drives, and then finally the SD1A which actually worked.) Also, if you have any of the CC1H firmware drives, they have their own issues even though Seagate hasn't updated that firmware.
 
Xeth said:
Remember when ALL desktop drives had 5 year warranties? Those were the days...
Click to expand...

I don't remember this ever being the case. I do remember there being a time when enterprise drives weren't *that* much more expensive than their desktop counterparts however.
 
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