http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20139 Be warned. It seems Seagate may be welching on their wonderful 5 year warranty which all their IDE HDs have carried since June this year. For reference the industry moved down from the 3 year warranty which had been standard practice to just a 1 year warranty (for most of each companies HDs). As you can read it seems some (or most) of Seagate's HDs have a serial number which identifies them to Seagate as OEM ('component') which in Seagate's wierd world means it's up to the company you bought it from to offer you a warranty and nothing at all to do with Seagate! So if you bought a Seagate HD anytime since 1st June 2004 go to Seagate's site, check your HD's warranty and stand up for your rights. Of course this is only 1 article but it's certainly worrying. My apologies to anyone who has followed my advice and bought Seagate because of the 5 year warranty, I would have done the same had I needed a HD myself. They continue to score on the other counts of being quiet, cool and reliable but the 5 year warranty is what really made them the most desirable. Follow this one closely.
Meh, I'd rather not fret about a warranty on a drive that's probably not going to fail, plus I'd rather not open my computer just to see..
Interesting, I'd like to hear more on this. The 5 year warranty is the main attraction of Seagate drives in my eyes - otherwise I'd probably go Samsung or Maxtor.
Well Seagate have issued a formal response. It seems the problem is with the HDs they ship to OEM PC builders. These HDs are intended for use in a new PC and as such the warranty for the end consumer covers the PC as a whole (inc all of the components) and are the responsibility of the company selling the PC to the consumer. So the problem is obviously when consumers buy one of these HDs not realising Seagate sold it to OEM PC builders. Just to clarify this isn't anything to do with the HDs being OEM or retail when you actually buy them. It is how Seagate sold the HDs to the business who are then selling them on to consumers, ie as components instead of as part of a new PC as they were intended. Seagate recommend customers contact a retailer before purchasing in order to obtain the serial number which can then be checked on Seagate's website. Hardly a practical solution. The HDs should be clearly labelled as retail (hence 5 year), OEM for customers (hence also 5 year) or OEM for PC builders (no warranty with Seagate). To further muddy these waters the consumer who got stung and alerted people to all this apparently bought the HD retail packed! So maybe that was just a case of Seagate wriggling out of their commitment, who knows? You could understand the difficulty in spotting an 'OEM for consumer' from an 'OEM for builders' but surely a retail packed HD can only be intended for consumers? It seems even when you do buy a retail component you still aren't guaranteed it's a consumer product (and hence for Seagate HDs a 5 year warranty). Another (far milder) point of controversy is that the 5 year warranty only begins from the date of manufacture, not the actual date of purchase/receipt. Seagate state this is standard industry practice but in my experience HD manufacturers only go by the manufacture date if proof of the purchase date isn't provided.
This incident links to the thread asking ppl if they would go for Retail or OEM HDDs I remember saying: "Lol we are talking warranty here " Anyway, never had probs with HDDs, no matter brand I use: IBM (Hitachi), Toshiba, Samsung, Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital etc... I used to love Quantum Fireball
Yes. IIRC Maxtor took them over because I had a Maxtor branded Quantum HD, 60GB 5400rpm IIRC and it was actually very fast AND totally silent. Over the years I've mostly stuck with Maxtor due to consistently good prices, perf, low noise levels and most critically top RMA. Over the last 12 months I did begin using some Hitachi and found them to have terrible reliability. If I was buying now I'd buy Seagate IF I could be 100% certain of a 5 year warranty otherwise I'd almost certainly buy Maxtor.
/me hugs WD Raptor with it's real 5-year warranty... I have to say, out of IDE/SATA large capacity drives, i'd go with a Maxtor. I've got one here and to be honest, it's a bloody good drive - it's quiet, fast and i'm indifferent to how cool it is.
We use a number of different make hard disk drives in the systems I build at work... Everything but the seagates come back at some point... that's enough warranty for me.
