Saturday, December 17th 2011
Seagate Take A Leaf Out Of WD's Book, Offer Crummy ONE YEAR Warranties On Some HDD's
Two days ago, we reported on Western Digital's unwelcome warranty cuts. In that article, we said: "It would be surprising if Seagate didn't follow WD's lead on warranties." Well, as sure as water flows downhill and not up, Seagate has now followed suit - and then some. They will now offer miserly one year warranties on most Barracuda and Momentus hard disk drives. Seagate wrote the following letter on 6th December to its authorised distributors explaining this:
One does wonder though, if this negative trend is also a sign that mechanical hard disk drives are slowly becoming obsolete and that their overall reliability is dropping? Currently, they only seem to have a few advantages over Flash-based SSD's, such as capacity, low cost and long term reliability as Flash has a finite lifetime of write cycles. These plus points are very significant, but as they are eroded, there will be less and less reason to buy mechanical hard disk drives, so it seems plausible that the two main storage companies would want to reduce warranties and risk a backlash.
Now, we just have to see what Hitachi will do, given that they are still very much in the game and have recently released 4 TB HDD's, ahead of the other two bigger players. What are the odds on them not reducing their warranties?
Source:
The Register
Effective December 31, 2011, Seagate will be changing its warranty policy from a 5 year to a 3 year warranty period for Nearline drives, 5 years to 1 year for certain Desktop and Notebook Bare Drives, 5 years to 3 years on Barracuda XT and Momentus XT, and from as much as 5 years to 2 years on Consumer Electronics.So that's just a fifth of the time on some drives - a shockingly massive drop! Doesn't sound like a company that cares about its customers much then, does it? The new warranty periods will apply from shipments dated 31st December and the details of the new warranty periods are as follows:
- Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives: 3 years
- Barracuda and Barracuda Green 3.5-inch drives: 1 year
- Barracuda XT: 3 years
- Momentus 2.5-inch (5400 and 7200rpm): 1 year
- Momentus XT: 3 years
- SV35 Series - Video Surveillance: 2 years
- Pipeline HD Mini, Pipeline HD: 2 years
to be more consistent with those commonly applied throughout the consumer electronics and technology industries. By aligning to current industry standards Seagate can continue to focus its investments on technology innovation and unique product features that drive value for our customers rather than holding long-term reserves for warranty returns.Now isn't that reassuring? Translated, it appears to say that they want to save their pennies to spend more on research and development of shiny new products, rather than actually support their customers, who keep them in business in the first place. It seems likely that the missing time can be purchased as a "warranty upgrade", much like WD have done. We will update you as details come in.
One does wonder though, if this negative trend is also a sign that mechanical hard disk drives are slowly becoming obsolete and that their overall reliability is dropping? Currently, they only seem to have a few advantages over Flash-based SSD's, such as capacity, low cost and long term reliability as Flash has a finite lifetime of write cycles. These plus points are very significant, but as they are eroded, there will be less and less reason to buy mechanical hard disk drives, so it seems plausible that the two main storage companies would want to reduce warranties and risk a backlash.
Now, we just have to see what Hitachi will do, given that they are still very much in the game and have recently released 4 TB HDD's, ahead of the other two bigger players. What are the odds on them not reducing their warranties?
70 Comments on Seagate Take A Leaf Out Of WD's Book, Offer Crummy ONE YEAR Warranties On Some HDD's
Following the article: not that I'd ever think to purchase a single Seagate product, sorry but I've always had bad experiences.
I'll stick with WD RE4, even if they cost more :)
Long warranties = expense
They are also deadly silent (bear in mind my system is noisy) and bring the same warranty as Velociraptors (5 years I think).
It's needless to say that if you use them in home environment they'll last even more, if luck permits :)
Perhaps IBM's Racetrack tech that we reported on a while back will be the solution?
Can I have Maxter back please :rolleyes:
Of course that's why they would reduce the warranty. Why else? To many of their products fail shortly after 1yr and they know it. It's costing them a mint. Now they can keep building the same garbage and not be accountable for it. Money in hand. A large company knows EXACTLY what's going on. They have statistical data pouring in and know to the penny what it's costing them.
Maybe they wan't to start selling water damaged drives. :twitch: