Western Digital - Warranty Change?

[.Nut]

We're talking about IDE drives here. I wouldn't wipe PeeWee's butt with a Seagate IDE drive. Slow and expensive, and unreliable to hear Tannin tell it (wouldn't know. Wouldn't dream of putting a Seagate IDE unit in a build), I think that just about sums up all the least desireable traits in an IDE unit...

Unless you are speaking about Barracuda 3 or (bleh) the 5400 RPM "U-Boat" Series, I would definitely have to disagree with you.

Things changed dramatically with the introduction of the Barracuda 4 20/40/60/80 GB drives. Comparing Barracuda 3 or earlier to Barracuda 4, it's like night and day. I can't ever recall a line of hard drives that got so much better in just one model number increment. The Barracuda 3 is a rattley slug of a hard drive. The Barracuda 4 is a very cool, quiet, reliable, and fast hard drive. The Barracuda 5 line will only be better still.

 

[CougTek]

The Barracuda 5 line will only be better still.

Depends on which way you look at it. I don't consider a warranty drop from 3 years to a single one as an improvement. But on the performance and feature (low noise/heat), you're probably right. The safest aspect of the drive from which we can expect improvement is, of course, STR. Lower seek times I have waited for too long to still believe in it. 8MB cache won't hurt though.

 

[Buck]

The official announcement: http://www.seagate.com/support/service/warranty.html

. . . . that is, from Seagate.

 

[time]

Interesting clause that caught my eye:

Seagate is not and cannot be responsible for any loss of data resulting from the failure of any product, and accordingly you bear this risk. In addition, Seagate will not be liable for indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or other damages, however caused, whether for breach of contract, negligence or otherwise, and whether or not it has been advised of the possiblity of such damages. This allocation of risk is reflected in the price of the product.

They can disclaim anything they like but it can't exempt them from consumer law. However, that last plain english sentence is magic. It makes it clear that you have waived those rights in favour of a reduced price.

No crticism of Seagate here - far from it in fact. I'm impressed with the caliber of their lawyers or contract drafters.

 

[P5-133XL]

You're right, that is a good clause in a contract - it creates consideration where there was none before. It could easily make the disclaimer valid where it wasn't before.

 

[Buck]

I've sold a few systems that required that clause. I think that is how Tannin feels about the one ECS board he's had returned and then sold again.

 

[Explorer]

The Barracuda 5 line will only be better still.

Depends on which way you look at it. I don't consider a warranty drop from 3 years to a single one as an improvement. But on the performance and feature (low noise/heat), you're probably right. The safest aspect of the drive from which we can expect improvement is, of course, STR. Lower seek times I have waited for too long to still believe in it. 8MB cache won't hurt though.

Warranty modifications have happened in the computer industry before and ended up being reversed. Apple did their famous warranty period reduction back around 1989/90 from 1 year to just 90 days (!) for a Macintosh CPU. People decried the move vigorously for several months, but eventually, they reversed their decision. That was one company. As for the hard drive INDUSTRY reversing their recent warranty period reduction, I seriously doubt they ever will. From now on, if you want a 3-year warranty on a hard drive, you will have to either purchase a "deluxe" model or buy an extended warranty plan. Still, the reliability and resilience of these new "1-year" hard drives -- on the whole -- is probably incrementally better than what was available last year at this time.

As for Barracuda 3 versus Barracuda 4 topic: I've used both Barracuda ATA 3 and Barracuda ATA 4 hard drives. The differences between the two hard drive models is large in terms of speed, heat, and noise. There was such large and sweeping changes between the two models that maybe Seagate should have named the Barracuda 4 model line the "Barracuda 5" instead! ( Which would make the new line of Barracuda ATA hard drives, that should start trickling to market in about 3 weeks, "Barracuda 6." ) The rest of the ATA hard drive industry is only just now beginning to catch up to the Barracuda ATA 4 in terms of heat and noise.

 

[Tea]

As for the hard drive INDUSTRY reversing their recent warranty period reduction, I seriously doubt they ever will. From now on, if you want a 3-year warranty on a hard drive, you will have to either purchase a "deluxe" model or buy an extended warranty plan.

Not so. It is now official that Samsung is staying with three years. That's one 120 billion dollar company that is a major player in the hard drive industry now and looking good to become a more significant force still. Hitachi/IBM have made no announcement about not making an announcement but they still feature the regular three year warranty statement on their site. Hitachi are no small player on the world stage either, and probably have enough sense to realise that in view of the recent history of IBM's drives, shorter warranties for IBM/Hitachi drives would be suicidal. Hitachi need to reduce costs some other way.

PS: Samsung now have a 100% market share of the Red Hill hard drive market. The rest of the world will follow our lead more slowly, of course - same as usual.

 

[Tea]

Coug:

1: "Ganja", yes: hooch, grass, weed, Mary Jane, marijuana, pot, dope, etc. Doubtless it has other names these days; I'm 20-odd years out of date.

2: SR's current benchmarks are deeply questionable. I don't take their "Office Drivemark" seriously. I have written at length on these concerns and, to date, no-one has addressed them in a comprehensive manner. I do pay attention to their low-level tests, on which the Spinpoints perform very well indeed. In any case, if you were to poll your customers (or mine, or anyone's) you would soon find that reliability and data integrity rate a long, long way in front of miniscule differences in performance.