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
So what manufacturers are left with decent warranty periods while not charging an arm and a leg for them =/
I just hope companies like Corsair and OCZ start pumping out stronger competition so both WD and Seagate can be tought a lesson on manners.Don't confuse facts with your 2 cents please, because you are right on the money with this one and you say it very well indead.
Still pisses me off that the prices have gone up, 4 DAYS before I was going to order 10 Samsung F4s...
If Seagate/WD are going to look into making this price raise permanent...I'll have to find another hobby, I guess...
But i dont want a doa drive or something i know will eventually fail either, like the last one i bought, i knew it would fail and it did so in less than a couple hours (tx seagate and china)...
But it's not like im in the market for a drive either, so im just keeping up with the trend for when the need arises...
I do actually have a wd black and green and i have some trust in them but i still keep backups on a "external" TB f3, and 2 500GB seagates made in thai for less crucial operations and as workhorses...
I wanted to buy f4 bust there wasnt any yet last time...
But now no more samsung drives it seems...
:toast:
Enterprise drives aren't any different than desktop drives mechanically at this point.
I guess we can all agree on one thing. They will all eventually fail so keep a backup. I backup my user documents daily and dump an image once a month.
My own regime, is to run raid 1 on separate data only drives, with a nightly backup over the network. I don't bother imaging my Windows drive, instead accepting the pain of losing it... (and I have, several times) :laugh:
I haven't researched it in awhile but does WD still offer 5yrs on the enterprise models? If anything maybe having the extra 4 years of coverage is worth the added expense. They are different though. Larger cache, burn-in testing at factory, different controller. They are faster then the consumer equivalent in my own tests. 80-90Mb/s vs. 120Mb/s of the RE (750gb tested). That was years ago though. Times have changed.
EDIT - RE4-GP at Newegg still states a 5yr limited warranty.
Western Digital RE4-GP WD2002FYPS 2TB 64MB Cache S...
The second one died in the machine with the other 4 drive in it and the other 4 drives are still running fine to this day. The drive just dropped out of the array, and on a restart sputtered for a second then wouldn't spin up at all anymore.
I've had desktop drives running for years on end along side enterprise drives, mechanically they are the same. They are just marking them Enterprise drives, adding a year or two to the warranty, and up the price to make you pay for that extra warranty.
Almost forgot. Faster error recovery. Enterprise = The only option for RAID. Consumer drives can and will drop out of the array during an error event.
Just glad they didn't drop the warranty on WD blacks few