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Hard Drive Makers Slash Warranties

Lucas123 writes "Both Seagate and Western Digital have reduced their hard drive warranties, in some cases from five years to one year. While Western Digital wouldn't explain why, it did say it has nothing to do with the flooding of its manufacturing plants in Thailand, which has dramatically impacted its ability to turn out drives. For its part, Seagate is saying it cut back its warranties to be more closely aligned with other drive manufacturers."

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  1. Re:Suspicious timing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Maybe it's that with the overhaul the plants needed, the new production isn't fully debugged yet, so the expected failure rate has increased?

    To me it means that servicing/replacing drives under warranty is being reduced due to the wall street pressure to maximize profitability, or the technology to offer more capacity per drive is not as reliable as older, less dense technologies and they are hedging against that.

    But I like your theory too.