Question OEM drives and warranty

[CrispyBytes]

Hi,
I recently purchased an 18TB Seagate EXOS (SATA) drive to swap out with another drive that I need to RMA to Seagate (an Ironwolf).

I bought the EXOS from an Amazon.co.uk seller. The Seagate website allowed me to register the drive, but gave a warranty expiry of just under 4 years (rather than the full 5) and when I queried this, customer support told me that the warranty was not valid at all, and that I would have to go via the seller for any warranty issues. They also said

this drive was not meant to be sold as a separate stand alone internal enterprise disk but was removed from a larger system, (a server most likely) that was made by Dell, HP, IBM, etc, it was dismantled and then sold in pieces

I have previously bought a 16TB EXOS drive from a different seller on Amazon. That one was flagged by Seagate, as originally being sold in another country (I am in the UK), but they eventually agreed to honour the warranty.

I do want to buy another EXOS, but I am concerned that I will fall foul of the same issue again. I had a look for the same drive on Scan, which is not a bad price, but they say that the drive is OEM, and also say, in an answered question

Thank you for your message, we can confirm that this item does come with a 5 year warranty direct with Scan.

Kind Regards,
Team Scan

So, I have a couple of questions that I am hoping you could advise me on

1. Is it likely that the drive I bought was actually taken from a server (as the Seagate rep said), or is it just that it was a drive that was sold in bulk on an OEM basis, but then just resold as retail?
2. If a drive is flagged as OEM, is it always going to be a problem with manufacturers' warranties?
3. Are all EXOS drives likely to be OEM?
4. Is there a guaranteed way to buy these drives to make sure that I get the full Seagate warranty?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[Gam3r01]

1. Likely sold as an OEM batch and parted out, more likely than being pulled from a server and parted out, I highly doubt it saw any actual use.
2. Depends on the company and the rep, I wouldnt risk it since youve already gotten flagged once, you know it happens.
3. Personally I dont know about this.
4. Luck most likely. That said, the quote you posted from Scan says its warrantied directly with them, which indicated no manufacturer warranty.

 

[CrispyBytes]

Thank you. Seems like it can be a bit of a minefield. I have had success in convincing Seagate to honour a warranty, but it is obviously not guaranteed.

It is especially difficult on Amazon, where most of the sellers cannot really offer a credible warranty (the business address of the one I bought from is a small office down a side street, possibly their accountants, and has been trading for a year)

Scan looks like a better bet, but do not actually publish the wording of their warranty, so it is impossible to tell what you are getting. At least they will likely be around, and contactable, in 5 years.

Ideally, they would just pass any warranty requests (including RMAs) through to Seagate to deal with.

 

[BFG-9000]

An OEM drive means someone has waived the warranty in exchange for a lower bulk price from Seagate. That's why Scan said they would warranty it themselves instead of Seagate. It has no Seagate warranty so they would not be passing anything to them.

You were able to get an exception on the other drive because it was a retail drive intended for another country, which would normally be covered by the Seagate warranty in that other region.

The moral is if you want an actual Seagate warranty, then buy a retail drive. The warranty is like insurance--if you want it, you have to pay for it. OEMs don't want to pay for it so will self-insure

 

[CrispyBytes]

Thanks BFG-9000, that's very helpful.

I found this, which suggests that, in some cases, there may still be a warranty on OEM products from Seagate

OEM Warranty Statements | Seagate UK

I think the problem is that the drives often aren't listed as OEM (although they are on Scan), and I can't even find an EXOS drive that is definitely retail.

The price I paid for the "other region" drive is similar to the price I paid for this OEM, so even the price is not a definitive indication.

I suspect it maybe possible that the Scan drives will have a warranty (such as the one linked above) but I will have to contact them to verify (perhaps for Ironwold Pros instead, because Exos isn't listed).

 

[Lafong]

I've heard of similar things with Western Digital.

Instances where an OEM drive's serial number is not even found in the consumer-facing web pages...and therefore not subject to any alleged warranty.

Not sure how widespread it is with WD, but their customer support area used to be riddled with these type of complaints.

 

[CrispyBytes]

I've heard of similar things with Western Digital.

Instances where an OEM drive's serial number is not even found in the consumer-facing web pages...and therefore not subject to any alleged warranty.

Not sure how widespread it is with WD, but their customer support area used to be riddled with these type of complaints.

Thanks.

In my case, with Seagate and this new EXOS drive, I went to my dashboard entered the serial number and it seemed to be accepted, albeit with a date in June 2026.

However, when I clicked on "Support" under the drive and then selected email support, it asked me for the SN and then said it was invalid. That is when I used the warranty checker, which flagged it as not covered and told me to contact the seller for warranty issues.

It is lucky that I tried the "Support" option, rather than just accepting that it was registered with the wrong date, as some people may do.

 

[BFG-9000]

That's interesting that Seagate now offers a warranty for OEM drives but will make the OEM handle the RMA process. Perhaps after the Barracuda 7200.14 debacle nobody wanted to risk self-insuring for Seagates anymore. I mean Backblaze had a 43% failure rate on the 3TB versions one year (some of the drives that failed, had their replacements fail too within a year).

It's kind of like the reason Kia/Hyundai and Volkswagen have to offer 10-year warranties--they don't exactly have a reputation for reliability so this helps reassure the customer they won't be out-of-pocket for repairs. Most wouldn't consider buying the brand without it.

At least in the US, the Seagate product page itself links directly to "where to buy" a presumably retail but bare EXOS drive.

I always thought it was odd that Backblaze did not generally find Enterprise drives to be any more reliable than consumer ones, in their decidedly non-consumerish always-on and high-vibration datacenter application. However with Seagate you can't buy such a large consumer drive, or one without slow SMR

 

[CrispyBytes]

Just wanted to again thank you all for your input, and wrap up this thread by letting you know that I ordered a replacement 18TB EXOS which was sold direct by Amazon.co.uk

It was shipped from Italy, but registered fine on the Seagate site, with a full 5 year warranty, and the warranty checker tool also verified that the warranty was good.