Western Digital slashes warranty periods on Blue and Green drives

[Arthur]

From 02/01/2012, Caviar Blue/Green and Scorpio Blue hard drives from Western Digital will come with a two year warranty instead of three.

 

Link: www.techpowerup.com/156861/WD-Slashes-HDD-Warranties-By-A-Third-%E2%80%93-But-You-Can-Buy-Them-Back.html

 

Way back in 2008, we reported that Seagate was lowering warranties of its hard disk drives from 5 years to 3. This trend quickly spread throughout the HDD industry and unsurprisingly, wasn't something that customers were too happy about. Now, Western Digital is lowering the warranty on some of its HDD lines from 3 years to a mere 2, with the affected lines being the Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue. Lines not affected are the Caviar Black, Scorpio Black, A/V drives and externals. Also, as the stock feeds through the channel, there will be a transition period where the same model in a store will have either a 2 or 3 year warranty, depending on its serial number, which can be checked on WD's support site. It will be interesting to see if retailers will clearly differentiate to customers which drives have which warranty, as it might be rather convenient for them not to.

 

Channel partners have received a letter from SelectWD about this:

 

This new warranty policy will be effective for drives shipped from January 2nd, 2012. It is important that you take a moment to update your website(s) and collateral to reflect this change for effected drives shipped after January 1st, 2012.

 

All drives shipped to distributors prior to Jan. 2nd 2012 will retain the current warranty terms. Because of existing inventory in the distribution channel there will be a short period of time when some drives with a 3-year warranty will be sold at the same time as drives with a 2-year warranty.

 

If you have any doubt about the warranty of a drive you purchased, you can go to support.wdc.com, select Warranty and RMA Services and proceed to the Warranty Check page.

 

The letter goes on to say "In the near future we will be unveiling an extended warranty offering with special pricing." At this time, there's no explanation why WD is reducing its warranty term.

[ricki]

Money is getting tight and its a way to save money.

 

Richard

[Arthur]

Not to be outdone by WD, Seagate has decided to cut some of its drive warranties down to 1 year, while other models drop from five years to two or three!

 

Source: www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/16/seagate_cutting_warranties/

 

Seagate is cutting most Barracuda and Momentus warranty periods down to one year with others moving from five-year warranties to three.

 

Following on from Western Digital cutting some of its warranty periods to two years, we learn that Seagate is going further. In a letter to its authorised distributors, dated 6 December 2011, the company writes:

 

Effective December 31, 2011, Seagate will be changing its warranty policy from a 5 year to a 3 year warranty period for Nearline drives, 5 years to 1 year for certain Desktop and Notebook Bare Drives, 5 years to 3 years on Barracuda XT and Momentus XT, and from as much as 5 years to 2 years on Consumer Electronics.

 

The details of the new warranty periods are:

 

 

• Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives: 3 years
  
• Barracuda and Barracuda Green 3.5-inch drives: 1 year
  
• Barracuda XT: 3 years
  
• Momentus 2.5-inch (5,400 and 7,200rpm): 1 year
  
• Momentus XT: 3 years
  
• SV35 Series - Video Surveillance: 2 years
  
• Pipeline HD Mini, Pipeline HD: 2 years
  

[sonofsanta]

Hip hip hurray for the race to the bottom on pricing. Sometimes cost isn't everything

[X-13]

Wrong.

 

The law states it must last a reasonable length of time. A reasonable length of time for these would be more than 2 years.

 

 

They can say their warrenty is [X time] but the law is the law and they can't do anything about it.

[localzuk]

EU rules say 2 years, UK law states reasonable length of time, but that after a certain period of time it is up to the consumer to prove that it was a design flaw etc... Also, the law holds the retailer responsible, not the manufacturer.

 

Finally, this all doesn't apply to businesses or schools.

[mac_shinobi]

It is the blue and green drives we are talking about here for WD and we know there were a lot of articles / stories etc ref the green drives being flakey ( at least in comparison to say the WD Black drives ).

 

Think synack or someone made a comment along the lines of "WD = what data "

[Brucy]

The WD greens have a bad reputation, I think the problem stems from how the head parks. I went for Seagate on my WHS build, hope I don't have to fight for my warranty if i need it!