Western Digital Cuts Warranty on HDD 3 to 2 Years UPDATE: Seagate down it to1yr

[Sam]

This one is serious. first the Thailand flood causing shortage of hard drive, causing price to skyrocket, and now the reduction in warranty. Western Digital sent out a letter to its channel partners:

It is important that you take a moment to update your website(s) and collateral to reflect this change for effected drives shipped after January 1st, 2012.

All drives shipped to distributors prior to Jan. 2nd 2012 will retain the current warranty terms. Because of existing inventory in the distribution channel there will be a short period of time when some drives with a 3-year warranty will be sold at the same time as drives with a 2-year warranty.

so its clear from the above letter that the current hard drive will retain the 3yrs warranty. only the new ones purchased after 2nd of January 2012 will see this reduction in warranty. Moreover as once shipped, a hard drive takes sometime to reach the shops, so new drives purchased by Mid-January will have less warranty.

But anyone that wants 5yrs warranty can still go for Caviar Black which cost a bit less than a SSD.

It'll be interesting if Seagate does the same. i feel, they will.

Source: dailytech

PS: i have not posted in the other HDD thread. this news deserves a new thread.

Seagate Warranty Details:

Barracuda and Barracuda Green 3.5-inch drives	12 Months
Momentus 2.5-inch (5400 and 7200RPM)	12 Months
Barracuda XT	Three years
Momentus XT	Three years
Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives	Three years

Western Digital Warranty Details:

Caviar Green 3.5-inch	Two Years
Caviar Blue 3.5-inch	Two Years
Scorpio Blue 2.5-inch	Two Years
Caviar Black 3.5-inch	five Years

[clmlbx]

It's a two way loss.. First price increase although not by company but still and then reduction in warranty..

Now to think is ..Is this move temporary or they are cutting some quality out in future products..

[Sam]

Originally Posted by Sam

It'll be interesting if Seagate does the same. i feel, they will.

as expected. Seagate cuts warranty down to 1yr. yes 365days only on the Barracuda & Barracuda green drives. for full article, visit dailytech.

[reniarahim1]

hhmm..really bad news

[comp@ddict]

Thread Title is misleading. Seagate is offering between 1 and 3 years warranty on different product groups

[Sam]

WD is offering 5yr & 3yr warranty on the highend drives. here we are talking about the (once used to be) dirt cheap Green/Blue/Barracuda/Barracuda green drives.

[saswat23]

Then the only hope lies with Hitachi. Hope they dont cut down warranty.
BTW what about the warranty of ext. Drives??

[Sam]

Hitachi part of WD now. so maybe 2yrs from them too. external hard drive should retain their 3yr warranty.

this is the problem when you have only 2 manufacturers. if one makes a move the second one is bound to copy & we customers take the beating. look at the SSD space. every damn company is bringing out a drive & this is driving prices down faster than we saw in the mechanical drive space.

[Faun]

We need more players in HDD market now. Not enough competition.

[sukesh1090]

it looks like seagate and wd are working together.if you see now only wd production facilities are covered in water but we are seeing price increase in seagate drives also.they are going together rather than using the weakness of other.
Btw the reduction of warranty by seagate,is it applicable even to the drives bought before this annoumcement or only for newer ones.

[Sam]

Originally Posted by sukesh1090

it looks like seagate and wd are working together.if you see now only wd production facilities are covered in water but we are seeing price increase in seagate drives also.they are going together rather than using the weakness of other.

according to seagate, supply of raw materials is affected, same as WD. but can't disagree on your point. both these players are making some easy money.

Originally Posted by sukesh1090

Btw the reduction of warranty by seagate,is it applicable even to the drives bought before this annoumcement or only for newer ones.

new warranty applies to hdd brought after 31st december 2011.

[sukesh1090]

thanks for the info.i am releived now as i bought a seagate hdd about 2 months before with 3 years warranty.

[pramudit]

now the person who buy new HDD will have warranty less than mine 1.5yr old drive.....

[buddyram]

not good at all, 365 days of warranty for a hardware product is quite less.

... and now if the SSD prices goes down for a while then it would be interesting to see!

Originally Posted by Faun

We need more players in HDD market now. Not enough competition.

I guess nobody would take that risk as SSDs are on the floor and HDDs wont be in the market for a long run

[Sam]

beat bet is WD Black. still retains 5yr warranty. also marginally higher than Green/Blue from WD and Seagate.

[Kola2842]

Any guess when price going to decrease. I need an external hdd.

[malcolm_cg]

any other hdd brands other than wd, seagate & hitachi? what happened of samsung? remember having an ide samsung hdd.