Hard drive makers Seagate and Western Digital slash warranties

[PC-Technix]

Just in via ComputerWorld, I wonder if they will reflect this in the price of there hard drives?

In a bid to save money or redirect funds to product development, Seagate and Western Digital are cutting hard drive warranties -- in some cases from five years to one.

Seagate's warranties on certain drives were shortened as of Dec. 31, and Western Digital followed suit on Jan. 2. All drives shipped prior to those dates will continue to carry the warranty term in effect at the shipping time.

First reported by The Register, a London-based technology website, the reductions mean some of the vendors' most popular PC drives will no longer carry three- or five-year warranties.

Seagate said it is reducing warranty periods as a way to redirect cash flow to product development. The vendor said there is no change in the warranties of "mission-critical" enterprise drives including the Cheetah line. But warranty periods for the Momentus XT hybrid drive and nearline products including the Constellation 2 series are being cut from five years to three.

Warranties for some of Seagate's desktop and notebook drives, including the Barracuda, are being cut from five years to one.

Western Digital announced that it's cutting warranties for Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue drives from three years to two, but it didn't offer an explanation for the changes.

 

[Rosco]

this is the say the world is going... to bad. i guess they have to make up for the floods some how.

 

[PC-Technix]

They say it's to invest lol
on what "water tight buildings?"

 

[joydivision]

They are going the right way about making sure they have no business. This is just another reason to push towards SSDs, things which Western Digital and Seagate don't appear to make at the moment.

Anyway European Law will have something to say about this, as an item has to be fit for purpose, a £100 hard drive which fails after 13 months and 200 hours use is not.

 

[phaZed]

In the next 5-10 years I expect that SSD's will be mainstream and hard drives will only be seen in high capacity storage devices. It really is a no-brainer to go with solid state devices for a number of reasons. First, because it's faster (duh), but second it really IS cheaper to manufacture SSD's (from a material standpoint) once the tooling and manufacturing process becomes "tuned" for higher yields. I also expect to see some more SSD controllers and/or more competition from other controller vendors. Currently the SSD manufactures are spending a premium to incorporate the sandforce controllers, for instance. Third, the MTBF for SSD's is outstanding as well as power savings for the "green" folks out there.

Get ready, the Dino-Drives have been shown the door, and the floods have only helped usher in the new tech. Bout time.

 

[PC-Technix]

I have to agree with you on that. They are pushing out the old and letting the new in.

 

[Kitten Kong]

Anyway European Law will have something to say about this, as an item has to be fit for purpose, a £100 hard drive which fails after 13 months and 200 hours use is not.

This is true, however if it happened to one of our clients, the onus would be on us as our clients supplier to sort things out.

Then it is up to us to chase our suppliers (manufacturers).

We have to be really careful here.

 

[phaZed]

They say it's to invest lol
on what "water tight buildings?"

Sorry for the one post right after another... but..

What seems weird to me is this, I have been in a few clean room manufacturing facilities as an electrician (Infineon for instance) and the actual equipment is on the 2nd and third levels. The 1st floor is all offices and/or air circulation and management. At infineon there is a raised-floor construction, under the floor is a concrete waffle structure that the clean air comes through... it's 30-50ft down. That's a lot of space for water to fill.

I dunno how the fabs in Malaysia are built, but if they are the same general design I find it hard to believe that the "tool" and clean room portion of the building were overcome by water. Maybe I'm just way off base.

 

[PC-Technix]

Sorry for the one post right after another... but..

What seems weird to me is this, I have been in a few clean room manufacturing facilities as an electrician (Infineon for instance) and the actual equipment is on the 2nd and third levels. The 1st floor is all offices and/or air circulation and management. At infineon there is a raised-floor construction, under the floor is a concrete waffle structure that the clean air comes through... it's 30-50ft down. That's a lot of space for water to fill.

I dunno how the fabs in Malaysia are built, but if they are the same general design I find it hard to believe that the "tool" and clean room portion of the building were overcome by water. Maybe I'm just way off base.

Yeah I don't think the water got that deep

I have never been inside one of these buildings. But I wonder if a certain floor of a building has less contamination?

 

[joydivision]

It is just not about buildings, but the infrastructure to the factories have been damaged in the floods too. No point on having a factory if you can't get goods in and out.

 

[emsbronco]

That's a good point, but even if their clean rooms are OK, their warehousing of raw components and finished good is most likely on the ground floor, not to mention electrical connections for the building, water supplies may be contaminated, etc. And, don't forget that the entire region was devastated, so even if the plant was operational, the employees were dealing with their own homes being washed away and looking for survivors, etc.

When the flooding first happened, WD was very forthcoming with information to partners. I got the email that explained the impact to the region, their plants, and more importantly their suppliers. The biggest impact was the company that makes the spindles for 80% of all hard drives was also underwater. WD also said that they were working with their suppliers to get their plants back online.

Now, the emails I got from both Seagate and Western Digital about the warranty reductions came out a couple of weeks ago and basically said the same thing. what I find odd is that the 2 largest hard drive manufacturers would both slash warranties within a week of each other...that kinda sounds like collusion and anti-trust territory to me.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I don't see their enterprise drives mentioned yet...hopefully they won't be affected. We sell the WD Black Editions, and the WD RE3 drives...both are 5 year enterprise drives.

I've used Seagate Pipeline drives in our edge firewall appliances..since those are lower rpm, low heat low noise drives designed for 24x7 running.

 

[emsbronco]

Seagate's email said:

Products not impacted by this change include: mission critical and retail products.

Constellation 2 and Constellation ES2 are now 3 years, Pipeline HD is now 2 years.

Western Digital's email said:

Our WD Caviar Black and WD Scorpio Black products will continue to support a 5-year limited warranty period.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Good to see those weren't affected. Used to do some of the Seagate ES series..but just been doing WD over the past couple of years. Kinda bummer about the Seagate Pipeline...I'll have to find WD's equivalent.