Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Seagate Ups Drive Warranties To 5 Years

Posted by simoniker on from the lifetime-of-neglect dept.

swordboy writes "Seagate have just announced that they are going to standardize on a five year warranty for all of their hard drives, including desktop and notebook units. While this seems like amazing news, I'm certainly hoping that the company will be around to honor these warranties." The press release notes: "The new warranty applies retroactively to applicable hard drives shipped since June 1, 2004."

20 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. More reliable drives? by chrispyman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Perhaps this is because their drives are more reliable? I seem to remember most companies lowering the warranty range on consumer level drives from 3 years to 1 year not so long ago, so this is a welcome change.

    1. Re:More reliable drives? by Nakito · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or how about a more cynical view: what if this is driven by marketing, not quality? Consider automobiles. Which cars have the longest warranties? Cars like the Kia (ten years). Now which cars have the shortest warranties? Cars like the BMW (three years). Which is better engineered, better made? Which will last longer? Is a correlation between warranty length and quality? Is there a negative correlation? In light of the automotive evidence, I am not persuaded that length of warranty is any indication of product quality. It's only an indication that marketing believes the warranty will sell more units.

    2. Re:More reliable drives? by hawkbug · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You'd actually be surprised to find out then that Kia is tied with Toyota in the minivan market for lowest number of customer complaints regarding quality issues. I'm not saying you should buy one, but from what I can tell, Kia is just trying to market their vehicles well since nobody trusts the brand yet. If the company stands behind it for 10 years, I can only assume that puts out a positive message for the company.

  2. Yeah but what about ... by drsmack1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who cares about the warranty anyways? The data on that drive is a whole lot more important. Losing $100K of data through a hole in your backup strategy is a injury that will not be healed by the replacement of a $175 disk drive.

    --

    Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind

    1. Re:Yeah but what about ... by Cthefuture · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But if you're using proper procedures it shouldn't be a problem. RAID array, backups if you can... etc.

      Then when a drive in your RAID array fails, it can be replaced under warrenty for 5 years. Sounds like a good deal to me.

      Nothing with as many moving parts as a hard-drive is going to last forever.

      --
      The ratio of people to cake is too big
    2. Re:Yeah but what about ... by Wanker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      At least you don't have to pay to replace the second drive in your mirrored set.

      Oh, you don't have a mirrored set? I guess that $100k of data wasn't worth the $175 it cost for a second drive then... ;-)

      Seriously, if your data is worth anything more than few hundred dollars (based on your own value of the time you'd spend re-creating it) it should be mirrored, and backed up to some sort of removable media. While few of us have data that's worth a whole lot, the cost of making a backup once a quarter (or once a year, even) is pretty negligible compared to the cost of re-creating everything.

    3. Re:Yeah but what about ... by Vainglorious+Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      most people don't have much valuable data on their drives. Face it, your porn, mp3s, and videos can be redownloaded. Your resume can be retyped.

      For many people these days, it is pictures taken with digital cameras that are irreplaceable.

      --
      My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
    4. Re:Yeah but what about ... by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In fact with inflation they even lost money.

      Isn't that backwards? $175 today is worth more than $175 in 3 years, plus they have had their profit for that time from which they could earn interest.

    5. Re:Yeah but what about ... by kzinti · · Score: 4, Funny

      What he said was "Backups, if you can".

      What I'm saying is "Backups: you must".

      See the diff? Good, 'cause now I got to go rope me some goats.

  3. Why does it matter? by www.sorehands.com · · Score: 4, Insightful
    They probably saw that their drive drive lives are averaging over 5 years, and competition is increasing. Thus, they make a big announcement of a longer warranty. Of course to get a replacement, you will have to submit the original receipt.


    Expect several other drive makers to do the same shortly.


    Manufacturers will always give a warranty that is shorter than the failure age of the unit.

    --
    Fight Spammers!
  4. Would this hurt SCSI sales? by Fiz+Ocelot · · Score: 3, Interesting
    If I can get a 5 year warrenty on an ide drive, I think that would make me less likely to purchase a scsi drive on the reliability factor alone. I'm only talking about reliability not speed.

    This seems like it could hurt them financially in the long run, but maybe they're trying to increase short term sales?

  5. The tiny print... by The+Living+Fractal · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...This warranty is void when the tape covering the drive connectors is removed... ;o

    --
    I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
  6. Smart idea! by travail_jgd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most drive failures happen fairly early after purchase (first month or so of use). How many people will endure the hassle of warranty repair on a 3-5 year old hard drive, when they can pick up something significantly bigger and faster? Getting a refurbed 80-250 GB drive won't seem worth the effort when retailers will have 1-2 TB drives (guesstimate) available for the price of the original.

    And like Ars Technica said, it's something else that they can advertise on the box to set themselves apart from other vendors.

    1. Re:Smart idea! by Demolition · · Score: 4, Informative

      How many people will endure the hassle of warranty repair on a 3-5 year old hard drive, when they can pick up something significantly bigger and faster?

      I don't know about other folks, but I've gladly "endure[d] the hassle of a warranty repair" on old defective drives, and have received much higher capacity drives in return for my troubles. For example, in the last four years, IBM has sent a 10 GB Travelstar in exchange for an old dead 6.4 GB unit, Maxtor sent a 60 GB DiamondMaxPlus9 in exchange for a dead 40 GB unit, and Seagate sent an 80 GB Barracuda 7200.7 in exchange for a squeaky 40 GB Barracuda III.

      In each case, I phoned the tech support departments of the respective manufacturer to ask about RMA procedures. They asked me a few questions, approved the RMAs, then had new drives sent out (IBM sent theirs by Next-Day Air -- a very nice gesture). Upon receiving them, I repackaged the dead drives in the boxes that the new drives had arrived in, took them down to Purolator and sent them to their respective manufacturers at their expense.

      Altogether, I spent about 20 minutes on each warranty incident, and received replacements that were, in my opinion, of higher value than the original items. So, I don't consider what I had to go through as a "hassle". In fact, if that's the sort of thing that I can expect if/when I need to RMA another drive in the future, then I'd gladly endure it without complaint. :-)

      D.


      p.s. Of course, my experiences are anecdotal, and I don't pretend to think that these companies regularly act so magnanimously towards all warranty claims. Perhaps I just happened to get lucky, though.

  7. Seagate is thumbing its nose at competitors... by stienman · · Score: 4, Funny


    Seagate is clearly saying to its competitiors:

    We uped our standards - now up yours!

    -Adam

  8. Good return policies make warranties a moot point. by ezraekman · · Score: 5, Informative

    I buy my hard drives at Costco. (They don't sell them online; only at local stores.)

    A little known fact about stores like this is that their return policy is "unlimited". They have a sign posted that says "it is helpful if you return the product with original receipt, in 30 days", etc. "Helpful", but not required. Of course, it's likely that the product will drop in price by the time you return it so you'd better keep the receipt... but the timeline is only a suggestion. It is generally thought that this policy is only 6 months... but that's for COMPLETE COMPUTER SYSTEMS. ("Desktop and notebook computers".) Everything else in the store (including peripherals) can be returned as long as you keep your membership.

    Recently, I picked up a Maxtor external USB 2.0/Firewire external 160GB 8MB Cache drive with all necessary cables for $109. It's not the largest drive on the planet, but the price is decent, and the "warranty" is second to none. If I decide I don't like the color four years from now, I can just bring it back. It was also nice that it shipped with both firewire and USB cables so it was ready to go, out of the box.

    Granted, there's nothing that can give the peace of mind of a decent backup. Also, their selection is somewhat minimal. But data aside, I have yet to find a better guarantee for hardware than Costco's.

  9. Thank you, Seagate! by outZider · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is so great. I happily pay the premium every time for Seagate drives over anyone else. I've had two fail since I've started buying them, and they were taken care of with cross shipping, no questions asked. Great customer service, incredibly quiet drives, and very easy to deal with.

    Ugh, I sound like an eBay response. A+++ DRIVE MANUFACTURER WOULD BUY FROM AGAIN.

    Either way, that's great. One more reason to buy Seagate drives, as if I needed another one.

    --
    - oZ
    // i am here.
  10. Re:5 years!!! by pjrc · · Score: 4, Informative
    Actually, with modern 3.5 inch drives, spinning the drive down and starting it again is probably rougher that simply leaving it spinning all the time.

    While it's spinning, the bearings are the mechanical parts that wear. Seagate was the first mainstream drive with the fuild bearings and even now, their have much lower noise levels than Maxtor, WD, etc. Perhaps lower noise is an indication that less vibration or other energy is dissipated?

    In any case, if you look at the hard drive specs, you'll see "start/stop cycles" specified for 3.5 inch drives as a measure of reliability. And it's not a giant number.

    With the fluid bearings in late model drives, you're probably a lot better to just leave it spinning all the time.

    --
    PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
  11. What's the real MTBF curve? by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative
    The people who run a large archival disk farm (petabytes) tell me that about 7% of the drives fail each year. Detailed field MTBF reports from other sites with thousands of drives would be a valuable asset. Hosting services need that kind of info. Does anybody track this?

    If you have 25,000 disk drives, one of them fails every five hours.

  12. Re:5 years!!! by Gaccm · · Score: 3, Informative

    I just did a little searching and found that all of the drives I looked at (6 seagate and 6 western digital drives) all have 50,000 minimum* as their start/stop cycle. If someone turns on their computer twice a day everyday, then that person still has 68 years of service out of that drive (if only starting and stoping were the only wear and tear on drives, life would be nice).

    *the Western Digital drives all said minimum 50,000, while the seagate drives simply said 50,000.

    --

    Only dead fish swim with the stream...