Seagate, WD Cutting Back on Hard Drive Warranties

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billybobser

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drives 50% overpriced, followed by a cheap scam to rake in more cash.

To be honest, the warranties never cover data loss, so really the warranty is typically there for an indication of the quality of drive.

Which I infer from this is going down. Reasonable given their damaged equipment.
 

tomfreak

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Are they trying to send a message to "smart customer", "buy our overprice HDD now & stop complaining about expensive HDD, or u get reduce warranty later"
 

1foxracing

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The Caviar Blue, the Caviar Green and the Caviar Black will be the only drives getting the swift kick in the warranties, reduced from three years down to just two; both the Scorpio Black and the VelociRaptor will retain their five-year warranties.
2 paragraphs later,
"Standard PC warranties are one year," a WD spokesman told PC World in an email. "Even so, WD will continue to maintain five-year warranties on its premium desktop/notebook products, including the WD Caviar Black, WD Scorpio Black and WD VelociRaptor products."
 

uproller

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Reducing warranties right after the manufacturing plants in Thailand start to come back online after the floods?


Hmmm............
 

memadmax

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Actually, the only WD drive that I have had give up on me yet is a 1st Gen Velociraptor. I discovered that if I put a fan blowing on it somewhere makes it last much much longer. I was literally going thru 1st Gen Velociraptors every 6 months for a while there.....
 

mas

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Seeing as how that data recovery is never covered, and that after ~3 years, the drive is essentially out of date, we are self-insured anyway.

Its unfortunate that what this indicates is a reduction in reliability. As if the products life cycle were as healthy as they claimed, the reliability would effectively reduce their exposure.

But apparently the reliability is NOT a sustainable feature and they are not willing to be exposed to the anticipated failures.

With the falling of SSD prices and the dropping of MO Harddrive warranties, its time to do pay a bit more attention to the SSD market.

So, the net impact on Seagate and WD? The general consumer is oblivious to the warranty issue anyway. So the companies will hae a few less drives to cover. But the informed consumer will begin to look elsewhere and at the SSD market - and Seagate and WD will lose sales.

 

yannigr

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It is simple. You buy today with ultra high prices and full warranty or in one year with half the price and half warranty. Just a small extortion from the companies.
 

viper666

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[citation][nom]icemunk[/nom]Well.. looks like I'm not buying any more hard drives.. Good bye slow harddrives.. Welcome SSDs.[/citation]

Guess their plan worked in the end...
 

tlmck

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It must have been my two recent returns. First I bought a new 500gb Black that sounded like a buzz saw. Swapped it for a new Samsung 1tb F3 which was faster and very quiet. A week later Windows told me my 2 year and 8 month old Caviar Blue 320gb was failing. WD diag software told me it was really really failing. It was still withing the 3 year window, so I got a free replacement, although they did replace it with an SE refurbished model. But so far, it seems to be running well.

I have been using WD for 20+ years and never had any trouble until now. I think future purchases will be Samsung.
 
G

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I have a different reading on that announcement:
Due to floods production is behind, we are going lower quality to meet demand but we don't want to pay for all that defective drives we ll ship.
 

slabbo

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hmm, they seem to be limiting the warranties around the same time. smell like these two companies are colluding. There definitely should be an investigation to see if they are. One thing we don't need in the PC industry is illegal collusion.
 

theuniquegamer

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They are such a****les. They had doubled the price of Hdd now they reduced the warrenty because they want to get a huge profit from the issue of flood in thailand.
 

kikireeki

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What's with the bad news today?

Apple Supplier Pegatron Reports Explosion in Shanghai Plant
Some Galaxy Nexus Users Having Touchscreen Problems
Seagate, WD Cutting Back on Hard Drive Warranties
New PS Vita Owners Report Instances of Freezing
$1.7 Million PlayBook Shipment Stolen at Truck Stop
 
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