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Tom's Investigates Hard Drive Warranty Changes

Posted by michael on from the cutting-corners dept.

Sherloqq writes "Tom's Hardware recently ran a story about major hard drive manufacturers drastically reducing their warranties on many of their products. Effective Oct 1, 2002, many IDE hard disks from Maxtor, Seagate and Western Digital will now come with just a 1-year warranty. This comes as a bit of a shock to me, as nobody seemed to have mentioned that previously (or I haven't been paying enough attention). Spokespeople for the big three cite disproportionate costs of in-warranty service vs. rate of failure, need to cut costs to remain competitive, advancements in technology used in manufacture of drives ("they're so reliable and cheap, you won't need a warranty anyway") as well as warranty period mismatch with OEM computer manufacturers (std. 1-year). Good news in all this: there are no plans for warranty period reductions for SCSI drives. For now... :)"

5 of 455 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. Warranty is a problem for them. by WittyName · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Would you want your 3 year old drive replaced and or fixed? Why should they stock these? Maybe if they just sent me the cheapest one currently made..

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  3. Re:This is stupid by Blkdeath · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If they really were more reliable, (and granted, I do think they are, at least segate),
    Speaking as a person who's had to RMA hard drives from every major manufacturer in the past six months (several of each - no noticeable bias towards any particular one), I can tell you that hard drives are being produced far cheaper now than I've ever seen, and that if anything, this warranty change is a reflection of that fact, and of HDD makers trying to constantly push newer/faster/better on their customers, and because they realize that they can't afford to actually service the sheite they're pushing on their customers.

    I only wish it was decision makers like that who had to tell customer after customer that it would cost upwards of $3000 to retreive their data on top of the cost of replacing the defective drive.

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  4. Other reasons for reducing warrantys... by danger42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Besides the obvious method of saving money, it's possible that drive manufacturers reduced their warranties under pressure from resellers... it helps OEMs and channel sales companies sell THEIR OWN service plans which are big money.

    Think of it in terms of Best Buy's attitude towards Apple/Macintosh computers. Apple used to have the best warranty in the computer business (3 years parts and labor, I believe). That meant that noone could sell an extended service plan (ESP) on a Mac. Because hardware margins are so low, Best Buy declined to carry Apples because they would never make any money on the ESPs.

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  5. Re:Problems? by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The problem isn't the older drives - they last 5 years before crapping out. The problem is the newer drives, which run much hotter.

    Add to this that about half the drives we've bought at the office have failed within 2 years ... sure, we got replacements from the manufacturers, but this doesn't obviate the need to restore everything on the replacement drive.

    It's not the cost of the replacement drive - it's the inconvenience, etc ... But now, it's going to cost us, not them.

    By reducing their warranty to 1 year, they're facing reality, and so should we - in a production environment, swap out your drives every year, before they crap out, and back up your shit as much as possible.