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IBM Drives - Clearing up the confusion..OEM vs Bare vs Retail

LostHiWay

LostHiWay

Golden Member
After reading the "Newegg screwed me" post and other posts in the past I'm going to hopefully clear this up for good.

IBM drives come in 3 different forms:

1. Bare Drive (most common) - This is what is sold by the majority of the vendors online. All you get is the drive itself in a antistatic bag. You get a full 3 year warranty from IBM with this. Most confuse this with an OEM drive. It's not!

2. OEM Drive - These drives are sold to places like Dell, and Gateway. These drives are hardly ever sold by anyone except these companies. Since these drives were sold at a substantial discount it is up to the OEM (Dell, Gateway) to provide a warranty. This will vary from company to company. If you somehow get an OEM drive from a place other than the original OEM your probably out of luck with a warranty.

3. Retail Drive Kit - This is just like any other Retail kit from a Hard Drive maker. You get a full 3 year warranty from IBM with this. These are not very common. I have yet to see a retail IBM drive. But they do exist.

Hope that clears up some confusion.
 
Thanks for the clarifications.

Just to throw in your bag of tales--I did get an IBM Deskstar 8 gig drive retail box from CompUSA back in summer of 1998, although that is the last time that I saw one in a store. It was $350--with $150 of discounts & rebates. $200 for an IBM 8 gig was a pretty good deal back then! 🙂
 


<< 2. OEM Drive - These drives are sold to places like Dell, and Gateway. These drives are hardly ever sold by anyone except these companies. Since these drives were sold at a substantial discount it is up to the OEM (Dell, Gateway) to provide a warranty. This will vary from company to company. If you somehow get an OEM drive from a place other than the original OEM your probably out of luck with a warranty. >>



I agree totally with this comment and after 10:00 PM CST I will give more light in regard to the "OEM"theory


Ausm
 
Guys, thanks for the detail of information re the different classes of drives. I'm anxious to hear what ausm has to say later today. I went to Newegg's website and for the WD, IBM and Maxtor drives they list them as OEM, DRIVE ONLY, while for Seagate drives they identify them as OEM - 3 year manufacturer warranty.

So, if I understand correctly what LostHiWay said the WD, IBM and Maxtor drives Newegg sells have no manufacturer warranty. But, the Seagate drives have a warranty. I also checked Mwave and all their drives are listed as either bare drive or retail, meaning (as I understand it) they should both have manufacturer's warranties.
 


<< So, if I understand correctly what LostHiWay said the WD, IBM and Maxtor drives Newegg sells have no manufacturer warranty. >>



That is incorrect. They should ALL have a 3yr mfg warranty.
 
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