What idiot decided to strip their 3-year warranty on standard drives down to 1-year.? Worse still they have also done this to Samsung drives (that they now own).

I refuse to buy any hard drive with a 1-year warranty, this now means that I will not buy any Seagate (or Samsung) HDD's at all.

This will seriously hurt Seagate's sales and will help WD a huge amount, as well of course as SSD manufacturers whose products generally have 3-year warranties. Seagate will loose far more money from their reduced sales vs how much they will save by having a stingy warranty.

Someone should loose their job over this moronic decision, and they should bring back a sensible warranty so they can compete, if they don't their only other choice is to reduce the cost of their drives which are generally the same price as other manufacturers drives.

Seagate I hope that you are listening.


Andy

Thanks Steve that is useful to know (if it is actually true). Seagate do not list the warranty period on the spec sheets of their drives, and strangely I have not been able to find a statement from Seagate confirming the increased warranty period, and there seem to only be 2 sources on the internet claiming that the warranty period for their drives has increased to 2+ years depending on the model.

Regardless as to whether that news article is actually true I still have a serious complaint. It is impossible to find the warranty length on Seagate's own website, and different retailers list different warranty lengths so I have to go with what they say at the time of purchase, as such the last 3 HDD's I have bought have been WD drives rather than Seagate (Samsung) drives so Seagate are still stupidly punishing themselves with rubbish information directly and via retailers.

I am going to have to buy another HDD in the coming week. The company I am likely to buy a HDD from still lists the Seagate warranty period as 1-year, so unless that is changed very soon I will buying yet another non-Seagate drive.


Andy

I use a credit card that provides an additional 1 yr warranty on all purchases.

That's pretty cool, I don't even have a credit card at the moment..... But when I get a new one I will have a look to see if there is one that offers that kind of service and see how much it costs.


Andy

The warranty reduction was due to the Thailand floods. Basically they had to forgo a little QC for a while to get back up to production and while that was happening the company couldn't take on the risk involved in offering long warranties. Now the warranties are getting longer argain.

They used the Thailand Floods as the excuse to cut warranty periods across the board while raising prices. On the warranty length, check out what Newegg lists as the warranty period for many of the Seagate drives. It has been dropped to 1year in most cases though a few of them are starting to see the longer warranty as Seagate took a huge hit on market share.

Even WD has dropped from a 5yr on the Boxed Retail Caviar Black drives to 3yrs, so it's not just Seagate and If I remember right, Seagate bought out WD so the only companies are Hitachi, Toshiba and Seagate/Samsung/WD making consumer drives. To bad as Seagate drives have seen lots of QC issues since the floods.

This is direct result of hard drive manufacturer consolidation. There are only two players left in town when it comes to traditional mechanical 3.5" hard drives: Seagate (absorbed Maxtor and Samsung) and Western Digital (absorbed Hitachi/IBM). The high prices and reduction of warranties across the board is a direct result of lack of competition, the floods are just an excuse. The floods have happened a year ago, and the hard drive prices are still higher than they were pre-flood.

+1

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The warranty periods dropped when the flood hit. I think it was mostly a quality control issue...they lost their baseline for return %'s and needed to reset. Since then, the warranty periods have gone up a bit but not at the pre-flood levels. Usually, the 1 yr warranties are for external drives that contain a power supply and it's the crappy psu that causes the lower warranty period.

Prices jumped when the flood hit (supply/demand) and haven't dropped to pre-flood levels because of the consolidation - when there are only 2 suppliers, they don't have to be as competitive. Bad for us, but good for the hard drive industry...prior to the consolidation all of these guys were only profitable sometimes...high competition meant low prices which meant crappy margins. Ironically, post flood and consolidation, WD and Seagate are rolling in the profit dollars on less sales units.

Most of the e-tailers that I use still list standard Seagate drives as having a 1-year warranty, a few have 2-year warranties, but they are companies that are more expensive and I dont buy from them.

WD still have 1-year warranties on a few of their drives, but most are 2-year warranties and they are (currently) the only HDD's I will buy.

The HDD market consolidation is ridiculous.

Samsung is now part of Seagate, and as they are shipping drives that are very good but only have 1-year warranties rather than the 3-year warranties that they used to have and are still much more expensive than they used to be, I am not using them any longer.

Hitachi is now part of WD and some of their drives have decent warranties, but others dont, presumably this will change as WD sort out the aftermath of the flooding.

FYI. As part of the deal for WD to be able to buy Hitachi, WD had to sell of one of its 3.5" drive manufacturing plants to Toshiba, who now sell 3.5" HDD's, which also rules them out as their 2.5" drives have a much higher failure rate than Samsung, Seagate and WD drives (in my personal experience).

The selection of HDD's that I would buy right now are very limited (SSD's removed from the list for obvious reasons).

Standard drives 2.5" and 3.5", WD drives with a 2 year warranty. High performance drives, WD Black drives. High capacity drives, either WD Green (2-year warranty) or WD Red (3-year warranty).

Seagate is nowhere to be found due mainly to the fact that the vast majority of their drives are still listed as having a 1-year warranty (at the places that I buy drives from).


Andy

Are you talking about worldwide? Or in the UK? Because they have to offer a 2-year warranty in the EU. Period. It's the law.

http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/ ... 022_en.htm

Not quite. As you will remember the UK is part of the EU but how this rule is applied is different across EU countries and there are some complications. Under UK law you can legally ask for your money back on a product if it is not fit for purpose up to 6 years after purchase so it's not like we're not protected! Here is some more info:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bill ... U-law.html

It's not quite the same as having to be a warranty as you can argue over an intended lifespan. It's not so clear cut. Question mark. Full stop. We don't use the term 'period' in the UK .