Seagate Lowers Warranty Period from 5 to 3 Years on Some Desktop Hard Drives

malware · Dec 12, 2008

Seagate, the biggest hard drive manufacturer, has announced today that effective January 3, 2009, the company will be making some important changes to its limited warranty terms for selected drives. The warranty period for consumer electronics (Seagate Barracuda 7200 included), notebook (Momentus 7200 and Momentus 5400 included) and personal storage bare drives sold to Seagate Authorized Distributors will be changed from 5 years to 3 years. Seagate believes that the new warranty period and terms better reflect current industry standards. Seagate enterprise class drives and Seagate and Maxtor external retail products that have 5-year warranty periods will not be affected by this change. Please take a look at the Seagate Warranty Matrix for more information.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

Tau · Dec 12, 2008

malware said:
Seagate, the biggest hard drive manufacturer, has announced today that effective January 3, 2009, the company will be making some important changes to its limited warranty terms for selected drives. The warranty period for consumer electronics (Seagate Barracuda 7200 included), notebook (Momentus 7200 and Momentus 5400 included) and personal storage bare drives sold to Seagate Authorized Distributors will be changed from 5 years to 3 years. Seagate believes that the new warranty period and terms better reflect current industry standards. Seagate enterprise class drives and Seagate and Maxtor external retail products that have 5-year warranty periods will not be affected by this change. Please take a look at the Seagate Warranty Matrix for more information.

Source: Seagate

Thats a dissapointment, as that was one of the factors that set them appart. :banghead:

Mussels · Dec 12, 2008

quite a pity. i liked their warranty.

eidairaman1 · Dec 12, 2008

seems like they are suffering for money aswell so they lowered their warranty, hmm makes me wonder.

qubit · Dec 12, 2008

Another "win" for the customer

malware said:
...will be changed from 5 years to 3 years. Seagate believes that the new warranty period and terms better reflect current industry standards....

Indeed, how comforting. This is a real incentive to buy, innit? <sarcastic> :rolleyes:

EDIT: I have a friend that repairs PC's freelance for a living and bought them exclusively for the 5 year warranty for his customers. Guess he'll be looking at the competition now.

intel igent · Dec 12, 2008

does'nt make sense to me to reduce the length of a warranty, might not be a good move for them.....

Smith_X · Dec 12, 2008

I think Seagate maybe face some problem for now. I notice that Seagate had not been release new Barracuda harddisk for a while. (There are only 15k enterprise harddisk and new FreeAgent model out there in 2008.) I still waiting for Seagate ES.3 (which should have anything improve i.e. faster transfer rate, more reliable and consume less energy, etc..) but Seagate still not release it yet. On the other hand, Western Digital launch a lot product line during third quarter recently. i.e. Caviar Black, RE3. WD still offer 5 years warranty.

MrMilli · Dec 12, 2008

I saw this coming for a while. Their drives don't have higher reliability but still they offer 5 years warranty. I guess it started to cost them too much money.
But why would you buy a Seagate Barracuda now? They are slower and will have the same 3 year warranty as the rest.
Anyway, you shouldn't use a harddrive longer then 3 years because failure rate rises around this point. Even if i would have 5 years warranty, warranty doesn't replace my data.

WarEagleAU · Dec 12, 2008

Yes they do and Seagate has some terrific drives. Personally I havent ever had to use my warranty, but if they lower the warranty period, they might as well lower the price a bit more.

Bl4ck · Dec 12, 2008

my 2x500Gb Barracuda 11 ... both died after 2months of usage, "old" WD3200AKS still works, good thing i didn't pay for the seagate's .For me only WD or Samsung. :nutkick:

Mussels · Dec 12, 2008

heres a thought: what if they're thinking "shit, we wont have any mechanical drives left in 5 years, only a pile of SSD's"

Top Geezer · Dec 12, 2008

It's Hitachi all the way for me from now on. They are without doubt the most reliable drives on the planet.

Mussels · Dec 12, 2008

Top Geezer said:
It's Hitachi all the way for me from now on. They are without doubt the most reliable drives on the planet.

i've never owned one. they dont seem to be for sale around here in australia.

How are they for noise and heat?

EarlZ · Dec 12, 2008

The 5 year warranty was the only edge that seagate had with other brands, i guess this pretty much evens them out and people will start getting the cheaper brand ( WD / Samsung )

FreedomEclipse · Dec 12, 2008

I havent bought seagate for quite a few years - I bought a few with my first system build back in 2002/03 but 1 of them failed on me within 2 weeks in quite a dramatic manner so it has been me & a great set of reliable maxtors for me back when they were actually 'good' before they got aquired by Seagate & slowly assimilated like the body of a rat thats just been bitten by a small venomus spider/snake - Slowly but surely Dissolving in the Hoi Sin that is Seagate....

Samsung on the other hand has really stepped up its game. its amazing how far theyve come in such a short space of time.

insider · Dec 12, 2008

I buy nothing but WD drives which all run 24/7 for many years now.

Top Geezer · Dec 12, 2008

We integrate Hitachi 1Tb SATA all the time in RAID systems (24 Bay) and never have any problems. We tried Samsung but they run far too hot and only last about 4 months. Seagate was OK but not as fast as the Hitachi and also ran hotter. We have a company policy not to buy WD after a number of failures in the field with no response or help from WD to help us sort it out but hey, each to their own my friends. We learned a long time ago that the small savings you make when buying the cheapest Hard drive is lost when you consider the value of the data stored on them (not to mention time, labour and transport costs when returned).

FreedomEclipse · Dec 12, 2008

Top Geezer said:
We tried Samsung but they run far too hot and only last about 4 months

O rly?? when was the last time you used a Samsung HDD?? back in the old days i admit they were a bit naff but their F1 spinpoint drives are one of the best drives around second to WD Raptors. I have NEVER been a keen fan of Hitachi stuff - their rice steamers/cookers pwn but thats about it - their screens are crap, their TV's are crap - anything they make thats NOT a rice cooker is crap.

Necrofire · Dec 12, 2008

The 5 year warranty was nice, but it was a little unnecessary for me. The only drives that have failed on my in the past 5 years have been ancient Fireball drives, and about 2 or 3 40GB drives, of different flavors.

FordGT90Concept · Dec 12, 2008

I hope they aren't reducing the warranty on Barracuda ES drives. If they aren't, then that's probably all I'll be buying from here on out.

AsRock · Dec 12, 2008

intel igent said:
does'nt make sense to me to reduce the length of a warranty, might not be a good move for them.....

Maybe it will cut down costs more than loose money lol. I'll stick with WD's with there 5y all though other might follow.

Does make me think that there is a problem.

niko084 · Dec 12, 2008

Mussels said:
quite a pity. i liked their warranty.

Same here and recently you have needed that warranty... :laugh:

I RMA probably 60% of my 7200.11 drives within 90 days.... I just changed over to ordering the ES2's hopefully they do a better job or I'm going to be talking to my distrib to get me some WD Blacks or even maybe Hitachi Ultrastars depending on price.

eidairaman1 · Dec 13, 2008

Mussels said:
i've never owned one. they dont seem to be for sale around here in australia.

How are they for noise and heat?

They are Pretty Good drives, If you have a IBM Deskstar (if you got lucky to have 1 for that long) and its still under warranty you can send in the Drive to Hitachi and they will replace it with a Hitachi Deskstar, Trust me ive yet to have a Hitachi Drive go bad on me, because the 80GB IBM i had at the time got the Click of Death (Click Click Scratch continuous cycle), which ticked me off that i went with WD at the time, then i tried the Hitachi and the Hitachi was overall Faster at 2MB vs the WD with 8MB.

niko084 · Dec 13, 2008

eidairaman1 said:
They are Pretty Good drives, If you have a IBM Deskstar (if you got lucky to have 1 for that long) and its still under warranty you can send in the Drive to Hitachi and they will replace it with a Hitachi Deskstar, Trust me ive yet to have a Hitachi Drive go bad on me, because the 80GB IBM i had at the time got the Click of Death (Click Click Scratch continuous cycle), which ticked me off that i went with WD at the time, then i tried the Hitachi and the Hitachi was overall Faster at 2MB vs the WD with 8MB.

Ya a lot of people never consider Hitachi, but in reality I have had very good luck lifetime wise with their drives, speed wise they are not premier, but the hold up seems to be pretty good.
In the least an underrated company IMO.

Woody112 · Dec 13, 2008

I've always used Hitachi for back up drives. Currently have a 500gig as a back up in my rig now.

Processor	Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 VID: 1.2125
Motherboard	GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3P rev.2.0
Cooling	Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme + Noctua NF-S12 Fan
Memory	4x1 GB PQI DDR2 PC2-6400
Video Card(s)	Colorful iGame Radeon HD 4890 1 GB GDDR5
Storage	2x 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 32 MB RAID0
Display(s)	BenQ G2400W 24-inch WideScreen LCD
Case	Cooler Master COSMOS RC-1000 (sold), Cooler Master HAF-932 (delivered)
Audio Device(s)	Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic + Logitech Z-5500 Digital THX
Power Supply	Chieftec CFT-1000G-DF 1kW
Software	Laptop: Lenovo 3000 N200 C2DT2310/3GB/120GB/GF7300/15.4"/Razer

System Name	Rainbow Sparkles (Power efficient, <350W gaming load)
Processor	Ryzen R7 5800x3D (Undervolted, 4.45GHz all core)
Motherboard	Asus x570-F (BIOS Modded)
Cooling	Alphacool Apex UV - Alphacool Eisblock XPX Aurora + EK Quantum ARGB 3090 w/ active backplate
Memory	2x32GB DDR4 3600 Corsair Vengeance RGB @3866 C18-22-22-22-42 TRFC704 (1.4V Hynix MJR - SoC 1.15V)
Video Card(s)	Galax RTX 3090 SG 24GB: Underclocked to 1700Mhz 0.750v (375W down to 250W))
Storage	2TB WD SN850 NVME + 1TB Sasmsung 970 Pro NVME + 1TB Intel 6000P NVME USB 3.2
Display(s)	Phillips 32 32M1N5800A (4k144), LG 32" (4K60) \| Gigabyte G32QC (2k165) \| Phillips 328m6fjrmb (2K144)
Case	Fractal Design R6
Audio Device(s)	Logitech G560 \| Corsair Void pro RGB \|Blue Yeti mic
Power Supply	Fractal Ion+ 2 860W (Platinum) (This thing is God-tier. Silent and TINY)
Mouse	Logitech G Pro wireless + Steelseries Prisma XL
Keyboard	Razer Huntsman TE ( Sexy white keycaps)
VR HMD	Oculus Rift S + Quest 2
Software	Windows 11 pro x64 (Yes, it's genuinely a good OS) OpenRGB - ditch the branded bloatware!
Benchmark Scores	Nyooom.

System Name	PCGOD
Processor	AMD FX 8350@ 5.0GHz
Motherboard	Asus TUF 990FX Sabertooth R2 2901 Bios
Cooling	Scythe Ashura, 2×BitFenix 230mm Spectre Pro LED (Blue,Green), 2x BitFenix 140mm Spectre Pro LED
Memory	16 GB Gskill Ripjaws X 2133 (2400 OC, 10-10-12-20-20, 1T, 1.65V)
Video Card(s)	AMD Radeon 290 Sapphire Vapor-X
Storage	Samsung 840 Pro 256GB, WD Velociraptor 1TB
Display(s)	NEC Multisync LCD 1700V (Display Port Adapter)
Case	AeroCool Xpredator Evil Blue Edition
Audio Device(s)	Creative Labs Sound Blaster ZxR
Power Supply	Seasonic 1250 XM2 Series (XP3)
Mouse	Roccat Kone XTD
Keyboard	Roccat Ryos MK Pro
Software	Windows 7 Pro 64

System Name	Quantumville™
Processor	Intel Core i7-2700K @ 4GHz
Motherboard	Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3
Cooling	Noctua NH-D14
Memory	16GB (2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance Black DDR3 PC3-12800 C9 1600MHz)
Video Card(s)	MSI RTX 2080 SUPER Gaming X Trio
Storage	Samsung 850 Pro 256GB \| WD Black 4TB \| WD Blue 6TB
Display(s)	ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR (4K, 144Hz, G-SYNC compatible) \| Asus MG28UQ (4K, 60Hz, FreeSync compatible)
Case	Cooler Master HAF 922
Audio Device(s)	Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty PCIe
Power Supply	Corsair AX1600i
Mouse	Microsoft Intellimouse Pro - Black Shadow
Keyboard	Yes
Software	Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

System Name	old school / new school
Processor	3.0e C0 @ 3.6 / e5200
Motherboard	p4p800e-dlx / p5q-DLX
Cooling	custom water see sig / air
Memory	2x1g oczPC4000EbPl / 2x2g ocz2rpr1066
Video Card(s)	3850AGP / 4890vaporX
Storage	36g raptor+120g wd / wd 1001fals 1tb
Display(s)	BenQ / sharpAQUOS LC-37D64U
Case	modded antec plusview / generic
Audio Device(s)	audigy 2zs / ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3
Power Supply	fan/cable modded powerstream 520 / OCZ 700mxsp
Software	Xp pro SP2 / VISTA ultimate OEM

System Name	Pandemic 2020
Processor	AMD Ryzen 5 "Gen 2" 2600X
Motherboard	AsRock X470 Killer Promontory
Cooling	CoolerMaster 240 RGB Master Cooler (Newegg Eggxpert)
Memory	32 GB Geil EVO Portenza DDR4 3200 MHz
Video Card(s)	ASUS Radeon RX 580 DirectX 12 DUAL-RX580-O8G 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video C
Storage	WD 250 M.2, Corsair P500 M.2, OCZ Trion 500, WD Black 1TB, Assorted others.
Display(s)	ASUS MG24UQ Gaming Monitor - 23.6" 4K UHD (3840x2160) , IPS, Adaptive Sync, DisplayWidget
Case	Fractal Define R6 C
Audio Device(s)	Realtek 5.1 Onboard
Power Supply	Corsair RMX 850 Platinum PSU (Newegg Eggxpert)
Mouse	Razer Death Adder
Keyboard	Corsair K95 Mechanical & Corsair K65 Wired, Wireless, Bluetooth)
Software	Windows 10 Pro x64

System Name	the HandsomeRulerOfTheUniverse was taken
Processor	Q6600 G0 @ 3600Mhz @1.35V~1.4
Motherboard	MSI P35Neo2 FIR
Cooling	LC - EK Multioption res,EK DC 4.0, Swiftech Apogee GT, Feser Tubes.
Memory	2x2GB Kingston HyperX
Video Card(s)	Gigabyte GTX275 overclocked.
Storage	Samsung F1 750GB
Display(s)	LG 2261VP-PF HDMI
Case	Coolermaster Dominator (RC690)
Audio Device(s)	X-Fi Extreme Gamer
Power Supply	Corsair HX520
Software	Win7 Ultimate x64

Processor	Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.8Ghz
Motherboard	Gigabyte P67A-UD4-B3 Rev1.1
Cooling	Noctua D14
Memory	4GB G.Skill 9-10-9-27-1T 2133Mhz
Video Card(s)	GTX580 1.5Gb
Storage	2x Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB
Display(s)	Samsung T220
Case	Lian Li PC-P80
Audio Device(s)	X-Fi Extreme Music
Power Supply	Silverstone Strider Gold 850
Software	Windows 7 Ultimate x64

System Name	WorkInProgress
Processor	AMD 7800X3D
Motherboard	MSI X670E GAMING PLUS
Cooling	Thermalright AM5 Contact Frame + Phantom Spirit 120SE
Memory	2x32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO DDR5 6000 CL32-38-38-96
Video Card(s)	Asus Dual Radeon™ RX 6700 XT OC Edition
Storage	WD SN770 1TB (Boot)\|1x WD SN850X 8TB (Gaming) \| 2x2TB WD SN770\| 2x2TB+2x4TB Crucial BX500
Display(s)	LG GP850-B
Case	Corsair 760T (White) {1xCorsair ML120 Pro\|5xML140 Pro}
Audio Device(s)	Yamaha RX-V573\|Speakers: JBL Control One\|Auna 300-CN\|Wharfedale Diamond SW150
Power Supply	Seasonic Focus GX-850 80+ GOLD
Mouse	Logitech G502 X
Keyboard	Duckyshine Dead LED(s) III
Software	Windows 11 Home
Benchmark Scores	ლ(ಠ益ಠ)ლ

System Name	Chuck
Processor	Core i5-2500k @ 4.5Ghz
Motherboard	msi P67A-C43
Cooling	hyper 212, 2 120mm fans
Memory	8GB DDR3 1600MHz
Video Card(s)	XFX 6870
Storage	60GB sata3 sandforce ssd, 1TB samsung hdd
Display(s)	Yamakazi Catleap
Case	Possibly Antec, not sure
Audio Device(s)	Onboard
Power Supply	Rosewill 600W

System Name	BY-2021
Processor	AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (65w eco profile)
Motherboard	MSI B550 Gaming Plus
Cooling	Scythe Mugen (rev 5)
Memory	2 x Kingston HyperX DDR4-3200 32 GiB
Video Card(s)	AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT
Storage	Samsung 980 Pro, Seagate Exos X20 TB 7200 RPM
Display(s)	Nixeus NX-EDG274K (3840x2160@144 DP) + Samsung SyncMaster 906BW (1440x900@60 HDMI-DVI)
Case	Coolermaster HAF 932 w/ USB 3.0 5.25" bay + USB 3.2 (A+C) 3.5" bay
Audio Device(s)	Realtek ALC1150, Micca OriGen+
Power Supply	Enermax Platimax 850w
Mouse	Nixeus REVEL-X
Keyboard	Tesoro Excalibur
Software	Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Benchmark Scores	Faster than the tortoise; slower than the hare.

System Name	Back to Blue
Processor	i9 14900k
Motherboard	Asrock Z790 Nova
Cooling	Corsair H150i Elite
Memory	64GB Corsair Dominator DDR5-6400 @ 6600
Video Card(s)	EVGA RTX 3090 Ultra FTW3
Storage	4TB WD 850x NVME, 4TB WD Black, 10TB Seagate Barracuda Pro
Display(s)	1x Samsung Odyssey G7 Neo and 1x Dell u2518d
Case	Lian Li o11 DXL w/custom vented front panel
Audio Device(s)	Focusrite Saffire PRO 14 -> DBX DriveRack PA+ -> Mackie MR8 and MR10 / Senn PX38X -> SB AE-5 Plus
Power Supply	Corsair RM1000i
Mouse	Logitech G502x
Keyboard	Corsair K95 Platinum
Software	Windows 11 x64 Pro
Benchmark Scores	31k multicore Cinebench - CPU limited 125w

System Name	Woody's MBP
Processor	2.4 C2D
Cooling	Frikin Air
Memory	Munskin 2x2 gig 1066mhz
Video Card(s)	9400gt/9600gt W/512mb
Storage	1TB WD scorpio blue
Display(s)	15.4" on lapie/ 24" Acer P241w on the wall/ 52" LCD TV
Software	OSX/ Win 7

Seagate Lowers Warranty Period from 5 to 3 Years on Some Desktop Hard Drives

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