• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

* PSA: Most Retail Hard Drive including the Plus 8Mb cache version - now only have 1 yr warranty

J

jimmyhaha

Platinum Member
This is nothing new for the regular drive, but Hard drive manufacture are silently changing the warranty policy for the Plus (8Mb cache) version drive, which comes with 3 yrs warranty in the past.

PSA: Most Retail Hard Drive including the Plus 8Mb cache version - now only have 1 yr warranty

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp

The famous WD JB (8Mb cache) now have 1 yr instead of 3 yr (new policy change on Oct 1)

http://www.seagate.com/support/service/retail.html

The drives warranty is designated by the inclusion or absence of the "RK" designator for Retail Kits.
RK = 1 yr, OEM/non-RK = 3yr

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/service/warranty/faq.htm

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus ATA drives that have an 8MB cache buffer AND capacities of 120GB or greater will carry a Standard Warranty Period of 3 years. All other DiamondMax Plus drives will carry a Standard Warranty Period of 1 year.
Click to expand...

So, if u want a 3 yr warranty drive.

1. Buy Maxtor DiamondMax Plus ATA drives that have an 8MB cache buffer AND capacities of 120GB or greater.
2. Buy OEM drive, which is more expensive than Retail drive (usually have rebate)

I belive the change of warranty policy is due to the fact that OEM drive is more profitable than retail drive (due to rebate) and less return due to hobbyist market compared to average Joe, so manufacturer can give 3 yrs warranty.

Mod, I feel this belong to HD forums, as lot of us don't read OT. Thanks
 
would more appropriately fit General Hardware

this is g@y, Maxtor switching from 1 to 3 and WD SE switching from 3 to 1
 
looks like its time to get 4 year extended warrantys with retail stores now :-/
that or start raiding everything together now...

hrm... maybe its time to go scsi...
 
One year is plenty for me. After a year, I am usually praying for the hardware to fail so that I can convince my wife to let me upgrade to something better. Also, in my experience if a component doesn't fail during the first year, it will usually hold out for a long time - way over three years. I know hard drives are very sensitive components, but in the half dozen or so I've had personal experience with, I have never had a Western Digital go bad and the Maxtor on my parents computer only failed once, and it started to go bad almost immediately (it just took a few formats of the hard drive to figure out that Windows was falling apart due to the hard drive failure). After that swap, the replacement has worked beautifully for the last three years. Three years is just a bit long, considering how short the product cycles are in the PC industry. Same goes for processors. By the end of the second year you are begging people to take your old T-Bird off of your hands because you are itching to slap in a Barton.
 
The thing with hard drives is that storage is getting to be just that - storage. You don't need a fast drive to play an mp3 or video. Even the slowest drive is faster than finding the cdr or dvdr that you burned a song to and putting it in.
 
This policy makes sense - athough it sucks for us.

The HD manufacturers now all do the 3 year warranty on their flagship models all others just receive 1 year.
 
Too bad, too, cause I was really liking the WD SE drives and planning on making those the only ones I'd buy retail. Guess WD doesn't want my money anymore.
 
Originally posted by: batmanuel
One year is plenty for me. After a year, I am usually praying for the hardware to fail so that I can convince my wife to let me upgrade to something better. Also, in my experience if a component doesn't fail during the first year, it will usually hold out for a long time - way over three years. I know hard drives are very sensitive components, but in the half dozen or so I've had personal experience with, I have never had a Western Digital go bad and the Maxtor on my parents computer only failed once, and it started to go bad almost immediately (it just took a few formats of the hard drive to figure out that Windows was falling apart due to the hard drive failure). After that swap, the replacement has worked beautifully for the last three years. Three years is just a bit long, considering how short the product cycles are in the PC industry. Same goes for processors. By the end of the second year you are begging people to take your old T-Bird off of your hands because you are itching to slap in a Barton.
Click to expand...


Well you obviously haven't had alot of experience with hard drives then!

Out of all of the components in a PC, the hard drive is the most prone to failure. I can't tell you how many 40gb drives I have sent back recently for warranty replacement that were 2 1/2 years old. Hard drives aren't like processors, you can have more than one in a system. I'm sure most people here have drives that are more than 1 year old in their system right now. (I use a brand new 250gb and a 2 year old 60gb as a backup in my main PC. I also have at least a dozen 40gb drives in use in secondary workstations for myself and family members.)

One of the things that kept me with Western Digital SE drives was that they still carried a 3 year warranty. Looks like I will be going for Maxtor Diamond Plus drives now!


 
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/service/warranty/faq.htm

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus ATA drives that have an 8MB cache buffer AND capacities of 120GB or greater will carry a Standard Warranty Period of 3 years. All other DiamondMax Plus drives will carry a Standard Warranty Period of 1 year.
Click to expand...

So, if u want a 3 yr warranty drive.

1. Buy Maxtor DiamondMax Plus ATA drives that have an 8MB cache buffer AND capacities of 120GB or greater.
2. Buy OEM drive, which is more expensive than Retail drive (usually have rebate)
Click to expand...

That is INCORRECT if you live in the USA. If you read further down, it says: Outside of EMEA, Maxtor branded retail hard drive kits and external hard drives will carry a Standard Warranty Period of 1 year with the exception of the Maxtor Personal Storage 3000LS drive, which has a Standard Warranty Period of 90 days. EMEA = Europe, Middle East, Africa. So it's still only 1 year for us living in the United States 🙁
 
The thing to remember about hard drive warranties is that they protect the thing you care about the least -- the mechanics of the drive. No warranty can protect your data. To me, paying extra for an extra warranty just doesn't make sense, unless you paid a fortune for a drive and the replacement cost is particularly high. MOST drives do not fail. If yours fails, you have to question whether it is worth it to you to pay to ship the drive in for repair/replacement, and then wait on it to come back.

With prices on big drives falling well below $100 with good deals, I don't think $20 for an extended warranty is a good bet.
 
Yup back when I paid $250.00 for a IBM 75gig drive A good warranty was important, but now when you can get 120gig drices for like 50 or 60 bucks after rebates and all,. somtimes even less, the data is more valuable then the drive it is on.
 
I remember reading an article in MaxPC mag where tey interviewed people from different HD companies about the shortening of their warranty programs, and they attributed it to higher quality components and smaller chances of failure.

Yeah, whatever.
 
The fact of the matter is the only parts that have ever failed on me have been hard drives. I have replaced (under warranty) over 7 of them for myself and family. These systems aren't dropped or otherwise abused. The only other part that ever failed me was a cheapo Turbolink powersupply. To me that says alot about why HD warranties should be longer than 1 year.
 
I envy you people who never had a hard drive fail on you 😉 I have had 8 drives fail on me over the last three years - 5 WD and 3 Maxtor, and in all 8 cases, the warranty saved my wallet ! Both WD and Maxtor used to be excellent with their warranty services ... AND ... you didn't need to pay a dime from your pocket for return shipping as long as you were ready to provide a backup credit card in case you fail to return the defective drive.

Granted that the drives that failed on me were running 24x7 in my Tivo and ReplayTV ... but that doesn't mean they should fail abruptly 🙁

One thing that scares me, is that newer drives fail a lot more that older drives. I still have two 4-5 year (or so) old 40GB drives which are going strong. All the drives that failed on me were the newer 120GB and 200GB drives. This tends to indicate that the competition and price pressure is bringing down the quality and reliability of the drives from ALL manufacturers.

There obviously has been good reason for the manufacturers to lower the warranty period from 3 to 1 year. I personally think they have been getting a lot more RMA nowadays ... which is forcing them to make this move.

Either way, it doesn't give me a very good feeling that the drive manufacturers themselves are losing confidence on their own drives !
 
I don't think $14.95 is that bad for an extra two years warranty, and you don't even have to purchase it right away. Let the 1 year run out first, at least I think you can do this, since they don't know when you purchased the drive. Could have been sitting on the shelf! Sure the data is more important than the drive itself, but wouldn't it make you feel better to get a free drive after you just lost your data? Sure, maybe not a good investment on a 40GB, but on a 120GB on up. Getting a new 120GB drive in three years will probably still be a good sized drive. Of course, I bet that's what we all said 3 years ago about a 40 gig!

So for me, I have a 60 gig that's almost out of warranty, kinda looks like not worth it, since they are so cheap now.

OTOH, when you have a hard drive fail, it's a good excuse to upgrade! I guess I'm on the fence on this one. Whatcha think, buy the warranty on my 60 gig non SE unit?

Note if anyone is going to purchase the extended warranty: "Only retail-packaged EIDE hard drives with a current 1-year limited warranty are eligible for extended warranty."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top