Report: Seagate Cutting Warranty Lifespan to Cut Costs

[martel80]

The warranty on the drive itself is quite worthless as long as it does not include recovery of the data, which is the most "expensive" thing about the drive when it fails.

 

[Guest]

I've also used Seagates (predominantly) in the last 10 years. I still have about a dozen of them: ranging from a 7200.7 drive to a bunch 7200.10 drives. The oldest is currently 8 (!) years old and about a year ago it had over 6 years uptime. None of the drives ever had any issues. The only problem I ever had was with the drives produced from late 2008 on. Namely a few USB external drives (7200.11 and .12s). Those drives were plagued by a firmware problems I remember (and one of the drives was not working out of the box). In the same time a few 3.5 inch SATA drives I bought for my HTPC are working OK with about 1.5 years uptime now. To me it's since the .11 series that their mechanical reliability started to suck hard. I am not a fanboy but the fact is all my other drives (a few samsungs, a WD and Quantums) failed in the course of the years, while the only Seagate, besides the abovementioned, ever to fail was a 10GB drive bought back in 1999. It lasted about 2 years and was replaced under warranty.

Honestly, if they remove the 5 year warranty period I will surely switch to WDs. I already have a WD external drive + all my 3 laptops are with WDs and I am completely satisfied

 

[eddieroolz]

I didn't need any more reasons to avoid Seagate, but it's nice to know they're trying harder to make me steer away.

 

[rantoc]

The headline is another faulty one here at the site, Seagate haven't cut any warranty and might never do it. The headline still reads "Report: Seagate Cutting Warranty Lifespan to Cut Costs." like its a done deal. Maby its time the companies starts to sue the smudging the poor journalism creates for their brands.

It should have be something like:
Rumors: Seagate May Cut Warranty Lifespan to save Costs.

What have happened to the Toms Hardware's so called journalism? Seriously!

 

[Guest]

In Canada, a 500gb hard drive bought almost 5 years ago covered under warranty would cost about $20 to mail back for warranty replacement, only to get a refurbished replacement 3 weeks to a month later with a few months left of warranty. A new 500gb hard drive can be bought off the shelf for $50.

 

[darkguset]

If they are prepared to lower the warranties, they should be prepared to lower their prices as well! I would not mind spending half the price and getting a lower warranty hard drive for every day use. That means if it broke down, I would spend a small amount of money to buy a brand new one after the 2 years. Otherwise I would stick with another manufacturer (and thank God there are plenty!)

 

[Thunderfox]

Perhaps they are cutting the warranties because they can't actually MAKE a drive that lasts five years any more...

 

[Guest]

I buy the western digital raptor drives because the warranty is second to none, its the same with apple products even though i dont particularly like apple

Pay for a premium product and get a premium service

 

[belardo]

Back when ALL drives had 1~2 year warranties, Seagate was first to pump up back to 5 years...

Warranties for a lot of tech is getting shorter. Remember when only the cheap monitors had the 1 year or 90 day warranties? Now, even Samsung monitors are 1 year. Luckily for us, many LCD monitors (not TVs) seem to last a good 5 years anyways. I have HDs that still work after 10 years (not constant use).

Logitech keyboards, even the $100 ones have a 1 year warranty. And I ask everyone to look at their keyboards, notice the letters and the outline? yep, they are using decals (stickers) for letters now. In the OLD days, they used 2 pieces of plastic or paint.

My keyboard was made in 1997, and I recently killed it with milk... after all these years. I look at computer stores and Newegg for a worthwhile replacement. Everywhere, people are reporting DOA, dying after 3~18 months. I see layouts I don't want... and black KEYS are very hard to see in the dark. People are now used to replacing keyboards every year now, they are only $6~25. My 1997 keyboard costs me $25. Best thing I found in box was a 1990 PS/2 class keyboard - loud mechanical. Luckily, I found a backup keyboard

Theres a lot of stuff out there that seems to be designed to fail, even thou our tech is so advanced. Data on our drives is the most important thing... so plan on spending about $70 for a 2TB as a backup... it'll be worth it.

 

[beayn]

I'm pretty sure everyone I know stopped buying Maxtor when they dropped their warranty to 1 year while other brands still had 3 and 5 years. They should keep a 3 year warranty to be competitive, otherwise, bye bye Seagate.

 

[hangfirew8]

I ran a datacenter for over 4 years. I had every brand of drive. They all failed on me. Seagate was in the middle for failure rate. Maxtor (sold during this period) was at the top. At the time WD had a firmware SNAFU on RE2 drives. A little later Seagate had their firmware SNAFU.

Shortening the consumer warranty sends all the wrong signals and lowers my desire to buy on the consumer side. On the Enterprise side, I count on drives dying, so I only look for the 5 year warranty for replacement disks and rely on NetBackup for my data assurance.

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]chick0n[/nom]That simply means you don't know "$hit"I had access to over couple THOUSAND hdds and Seagate is like the worst of the worst. So I mean really, this news will never hurt me one bit.[/citation]

I had access to millions and millions, and Seagates are the best. It's so easy to say stuff like that, but the reality is you probably live in a basement, and get hand me downs from people because you can't afford to buy your own.

A lot of companies use Seagate, and they wouldn't if they were so bad. Stop being a blow hard and overstating your importance.

 

[lp231]

Is this retail they're talking about or OEM?
Western Digital offers 1 year on retail hard drives and upgrades for additional 1-2 years when you pay extra "upgrade" from their website.
Their OEM drives are 3 years for WD Green and WD Blue. WD Black, Raptors, and
Enterprise drives gets 5 years.

 

[jacobdrj]

Anyone here old enough to remember the 'Conner Curse' (Conner Peripherals merged with Seagate in the 90's)?

If you opened you computer and found a Conner HDD, you were pretty much guaranteed to have configuration problems and data corruption... When they merged, Seagate got worse... Didn't get back on track until the mid-2000's. I seem to have heard that Seagate had another lull in quality the last couple years...

 

[rantoc]

[citation][nom]jacobdrj[/nom]Anyone here old enough to remember the 'Conner Curse' (Conner Peripherals merged with Seagate in the 90's)?If you opened you computer and found a Conner HDD, you were pretty much guaranteed to have configuration problems and data corruption... [/citation]

Ever tried one of the Conner's chinoch tech drives.. (2 independant servo possitioned r/w heads with messed up firmware). Now that was a thrilldrive, one week corrupted data, the next a dead drive!

 

[sonofliberty08]

well since hitachi hdd acquired by wd , and samsung hdd acquired by seagate , and toshiba did not produce the 3.5" drive , i hv no choice to pick seagate drive from wd & seagate , because ...... wd sux ......
if seagate cut the warranty and drop the quality as sux as wd then i might just get a toshiba drive for the desktop build and wait until the ssd cut the price to today hdd level .

 

[jackbling]

I, personally, would rather them cut warranties, in lieu of jobs. If a hard drive last 2 years and fails, there is a good chance there will be an extremely cost effective upgrade available (if your 4 year old 350GB dies, most people are just gonna grab a 60 dollar terabyte). Unless it dies within 6 months, I'm not going through the warranty hassle.

 

[ralfthedog]

New Seagate lifetime Warranty, We will cover the drive until it breaks, then it's lifetime is over.

 

[masterasia]

Seagate sucks.

 

[Guest]

A couple of years ago, Seagate cut all warranties on its external consumer products from 5 years down to 3. The reason? To save money, and because people didn't care - because the drive was sold on price and price alone. It's unfortunate that the hard drive manufacturers have done this to themselves - by selling on price. How many times have there been price wars in this industry? Every price war knocks profit out of the equation. And profits are what is needed to continue to re-invest in research and product development. There is always the belief that the lost profits will be made up for by higher margins. Don't think that's ever truthfully happened.
To remedy this situation, consumers must demand better quality. And in the eyes of the HDD companies, that comes in the form of paying higher prices for higher quality. No one seems willing to do that, with the exception of the OEMs and Enterprise Storage companies.
Consumers are cheap - they will buy the least expensive product on the market. So Seagate, WD and others have no choice but to keep cutting costs so that they can satisfy the demands of the consumer marketplace.
As an aside - you can find just as many people who hate WD because of lousy product liability as you can find people who hate Seagate for that. Drives fail. They are very high technology products that still have moving parts inside them. Fast spinning disks... low flying heads... It all makes for a recipe for disaster. What this really means is that you should always have at least two copies of all your most important data/files.

 

[Guest]

They're not testing the waters. I'm a buyer for our company and my distributors already sent me new part numbers for the 500GB 7200.12 2yr warranty versions once the 3yr model runs out of stock.

 

[michaelahess]

[citation][nom]TA152H[/nom]After years of problems with off-brands like Maxtor (bought by Seagate), Western Digital, and Quantum, I only have bought Seagates for the last 10 years, and have never had a failure. Before that, I had way too many. It's anecdotal, but I've had good success with them, and wouldn't hesitate to buy them again. Western Digital, Samsung, Hitachi or any other knock-off would have to come up with a pretty interesting product to make me try them.[/citation]

Wow, that's funny dude, off-brand? knock-off? Check the dictionary next time you post something with hyphenated words. I've RMA'd many dozens of Seagates, very few WD, only a couple Hitachi or Samsung. And I've sold LOTS more of the last three. Seagate has the highest return/failure rate by a LARGE margin in my experience. Samsung and Hitachi never die. WD is pretty good, avoid the Greens though. Black or Raptors.

 

[Guest]

Seems like the better approach would be to make the drives more robust so they wouldn't every break and need a warranty replacement. Drives that never failed would get you more sales and more profit!

 

[f-14]

[citation][nom]rantoc[/nom]The headline is another faulty one here at the site, Seagate haven't cut any warranty and might never do it. The headline still reads "Report: Seagate Cutting Warranty Lifespan to Cut Costs." like its a done deal. Maby its time the companies starts to sue the smudging the poor journalism creates for their brands.It should have be something like:Rumors: Seagate May Cut Warranty Lifespan to save Costs.What have happened to the Toms Hardware's so called journalism? Seriously![/citation]
ya we have all noticed it. it's just the one communist loving iCrapplefanboi trying to get himself sued by corporations and patent owners like the one that's suing spotfy and his copy & pasted article on that earlier this week that is seriously lacking the full research needed on the patent itself and just assuming whole worlds of defamation suits he based on the description of the patent itself.

 

[Guest]

Seagate drives are garbage, this just further reinforces it. They can't afford to maintain coverage, because the number of failures is so extreme. It has the dual effect of making it look like they don't believe or have faith in their own product. Cheap? Yes. But I don't think Seagates are worth it at any price.