Report: Seagate Cutting Warranty Lifespan to Cut Costs

[cliffro]

I have had various WD, Seagate and Maxtor hard drives over the years, eventually they all failed. The Maxtor was due to operator error, and they were very quick to replace it, and forgiving when I needed an extra couple of days to get the defective drive back to them(Advanced RMA), The replacement failed within the past year in a friends old computer.

I now have 2 Seagate ST332062 7200.10's and a WD WD6400AAKS and WD1600AVBS. I've had scares with my original Seagate and the WD6400AAKS, random corrupted files on the Seagate(Windows forced chkdsk and fixed that) and the Partition table on the WD 640gb disappeared about 3 days after installing it. Both are humming along fine now.

My point, I've had issues with 3 of the major brands and Hitachi(in my Stepmother's computer), and read about issues with all of them, The Hitachi Deathstars, WD500AAKS with high DOA rates, Seagate 7200.11/12's Firmware fiasco and Samsung just had a horrible RMA process.

So I read customer reviews at Amazon and Newegg before I purchase drives for customers or friends/family, because honestly they all have bad drives, some of it I'm sure is compounded by poor shipping standards by some of the E-tailers out there.

 

[john1963]

FYI all -- the rumor isn't correct. Seagate has not and is not 'cutting back on the warranties of consumer hard drives.' They remain at 5 years. - John Paulsen from Seagate

 

[john1963]

[citation][nom]kyee7k[/nom]Why not make it 3 months (90 days)or even 30 days like my monitor?I might never use that 5-year warranty, but it's a nice safety blanketto have if it ever fails or my next hard drive purchase from the same company like Western Digital. With this, you'll just alienate a lot of consumers and push them over to WD or Intel.[/citation]

FYI all -- the rumor isn't correct. Seagate has not and is not 'cutting back on the warranties of consumer hard drives.' They remain at 5 years. - John Paulsen from Seagate

 

[Guest]

Kinda gives a buyer the impression they are selling substandard driver to the manufacturers doesn't it?
If I was a "channel" manufacturer I'd be asking Seagate WTF are you doing?
If they are the same drives with all the same specs as a "retail" five year drive vs. a "Channel" bulk drive now at two years instead of the previous five years. Makes you wonder who is screwing who in this deal?

 

[kitekrazy1963]

I have both.
RMAs
WD 3
Seagate 0

I still prefer WD because their warranty service is what many companies should model. They send the product to you and you ship the defective one back.

Warranty is one of the big motivators for my tech purchases. Tech stuff is over mass produced that quality control suffers to some point.

 

[belardo]

I still prefer Seagate over WD because Seagate drives are a lot quieter. Even thou WD have low db, it makes a whine noise.

But all drives can fail... and look at it this way and it makes sense.

When a typical HD costs $120~300 (like from 5 years ago and beyond), its easy to supply the customer a 5 year warranty.

Today, you can pick up a 2TB HD for $70~100, depending on the speed. That means the store makes about $25 off the drive. Seagate makes about $25 off the drive.

The profit margins are too slim to give a 5 year warranty.