Hard Drive Manufacturers Slash Warranty Periods

ninjaturtle said:
Luckily I never had a HDD fail me( knock on wood...)

and um Major,
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1659025
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To the lazy people.

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
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Well that is annoying..But I suppose expected when no one else produces a hdd that is worth a crap.

Guess I will be sticking to WD Black series then.
 
PersonalJ said:
Guess I'll only be purchasing enterprise grade drives from now on.
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you can't go wrong with them, the premium you pay is worth it for the superior customer service you usually receive and the reliability peace of mind
 
glad that WD is keeping 'most' of their warranty.

Seagate... you can stick it. :p
 
cyclone3d said:
You really think WD is a bad HDD comapny?

I have never had a WD drive I bought new fail on me.
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Not because of reliability. More because of performance or lack of. Might have just been a bunch of bad models, but every drive i've had from them has been worse than drives from other companies. Which is strange how the shittiest quality (seagate) and the sluggiest performance (WD) got to own the HDD market...:confused:
 
I've had one bad WD drive in all the drives I bought from them. Ironically, it was the one time I had been a cheapskate and didn't buy the WD Black variant. Even then, it managed to warn me through Windows that it was getting ready to fail and thus I was able to save all the data on it (although it took 16 hours to pull off).
 
This still seems like low supplies (and lots of remanufactured drives) as a result of the flood despite what the article says.

Considering the only mechanical hard drives I have bought in the last few years were WD Caviar black drives, I feel fine. Warranties are being slashed on the giant drives and the cheap drives. Buy the good stuff and you will be fine.
 
This is pretty funny to me because being in the industry for 20 years I've seen the warranty periods go from standard one year, to three years, then back to one year, then three years again, and now here we are going back to one year.

Kinda burns my ass when I think about it, but what are ya gonna do. Boycott all the HDD manufacturers? Not likely...

My prediction is we see the warranty period go back up to three years in the near future as SSDs become cheaper and the mechanical HDD manufacturers try to retain customers. The consumer is already jaded because of the ludicrous post-flood price hikes.
 
Some credit cards offer a warranty extension (Visa comes to mind) on products with a one-year warranty if you purchase the product with said card. I get a year-long extension. The fine print doesn't seem to exclude hard drives from coverage.
 
uninja said:
I don't have a problem just buying a Samsung instead. It appears they do a 3-year warranty.
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Right? That's sad. I'm a WD fan first and Seagate second. All others are last. I might have to reevaluate this.
 
I buy mostly WD blacks so guess I should be fine.

Though I do agree they should be concentrating on build quality instead of quantity (disk size). It seems it's all a big race of who can be the first to make the next big drive. I have a bunch of drives under 100GB that still work. They're too small by today's standards, but they still work. I can't say the same about 1TB and up drives. They've all been replaced at one point or the other.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I buy mostly WD blacks so guess I should be fine.

Though I do agree they should be concentrating on build quality instead of quantity (disk size). It seems it's all a big race of who can be the first to make the next big drive. I have a bunch of drives under 100GB that still work. They're too small by today's standards, but they still work. I can't say the same about 1TB and up drives. They've all been replaced at one point or the other.
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My samsung 1TB+ drives have been rock solid.
 
WD how can you betray me like this. besides the psu its the component of a pc that requires the most reliability and longevity. everything else can go to shit as long as the data is ok.

this damn throw-away society we live in. a television used to last 30 years now you're lucky if it hits the 2 year mark. the price of everything goes down and down but the costs go up and up. its like we're renting our households from china and if we don't keep up the payments they repo everything. society has been so retarded we've pushed out any other choice we may have had. at least when japan was manufacturing everything they had pride in quality but everyone went $10 cheaper? for the same thing? well. its not the same fucking thing!
 
not buying any drive with a one year warranty, period. To coin an old term.. they can suck it.
 
gaspah said:
WD how can you betray me like this. besides the psu its the component of a pc that requires the most reliability and longevity. everything else can go to shit as long as the data is ok.

this damn throw-away society we live in. a television used to last 30 years now you're lucky if it hits the 2 year mark. the price of everything goes down and down but the costs go up and up. its like we're renting our households from china and if we don't keep up the payments they repo everything. society has been so retarded we've pushed out any other choice we may have had. at least when japan was manufacturing everything they had pride in quality but everyone went $10 cheaper? for the same thing? well. its not the same fucking thing!
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Amen!

Who needs reliable products when manufacturers can sell crap products at the same price! More money for them less quality for us! It's a win-win!

Fucking human race...when are we gonna learn?
 
LOCO LAPTOP said:
Guess il buy Enterprise storage drives now.

I won't touch a seagate with a one year warranty that's for sure! WD I don't have problems with, but still would like the piece of mind.
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Ive already started doing that. The little bit extra you pay for them really comes down to the extended warranty.
 
I can't recall ever having a drive fail within the first year.

But I've had numerous drives fail after several years. In each case the drive had proper cooling and was connected to a reliable high-end powersupply. I consider it 100% the manufacturer's fault that those drives died despite the fact that years had passed. That's OK because in each of those situations I sent the drive back and got a new drive.

Guess I'm just SOL now?
 
Freaking A. It used to be 5 years, then 3 years, now 1 year. And prices are going up, allegedly due to Thailand's floods. :mad: Pay more for less. :rolleyes:
 
MajorDomo said:
If you are planning on purchasing a hard drive in the near future from Seagate or Western Digital, do it real soon. The two HDD manufacturers will be dropping the warranty period on many of their drives to only one year as of the first of 2012.
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Good thing I don't buy Seagate then, 15 years of IT work, and they are the most unreliable POS I have ever seen, made Quantum Fireball drives look good.
 
Outamyhead said:
Good thing I don't buy Seagate then, 15 years of IT work, and they are the most unreliable POS I have ever seen, made Quantum Fireball drives look good.
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+1 I still have a Quantum Fireball that still works.

After the whole firmware issues Seagate had, that killed it for me. I am using pre-Seagate Samsung, WD, and my Fireball hard drives with no issues. When the Samsungs fail, I do not plan on sending them back to Seagate simply because I do not want their crap. WD black and enterprise versions from here on out I guess...
 
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