Did Seagate shorten warrantees? Best Brand drives?

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 12:11 pm

I was looking at drives on Newegg.
Most Seagates I looked at are showing 3Years warranty, did Seagate shorten them or is it the certain drives I was looking at? I thought it was 5years for Seagate?

WD is now showing 5 years on some drives I saw and I thought they were only 3years before?

Are things changing? Who has the best large capacity drives now?
Thinking about buying a drive size of around 500MB now.

I would like a TB drive but not sure they are reliable enough yet so I am thinking 500MB or 640MB? Largest drive for lowest price that will last the longest with least worries LOL
Is there any such drive?

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:02 pm

Yup, Seagate did that just a couple months ago. Right about the same time that their 1TB & 1.5TB drives started biting the dust. They said it was to stay in line with the current hard drive market, but I believe that they have a bad feeling about their current drives.

WD has had some 5 year drives for a while now. Their higher end stuff has anyway.

I'd actually check out the Samsung Spinpoint F1 series if I were you. They've been getting great reviews & there are no known issues of yet. There's nothing wrong with 1TB drives in general, but Seagate drives have been dropping like flies lately (know a couple people it's happened to so far).

eGoCeNTRoNiX · Post by **eGoCeNTRoNiX** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:39 pm

Actually, I think Seagate still has a 5 year warranty on Retail drives, they reduced the warranty on the OEM drives due to their inability to guarantee proper shipping methods.. I think?

eGo

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:53 pm

Oh, I forgot about that. I think you're correct. It's been a while since I've bought a retail drive though.

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 4:26 pm

eGoCeNTRoNiX wrote:Actually, I think Seagate still has a 5 year warranty on Retail drives, they reduced the warranty on the OEM drives due to their inability to guarantee proper shipping methods.. I think?

eGo

correct...but i do not believe the actual reason was ever announced (other than some type of marketing speak). 5yrs is still good on retail.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 6:34 pm

They stated that it was, "more in line with the industry standard warranty length".

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 11:17 pm

Thanks.

I been looking at drives and some of the reviews were looking scary at Newegg. Most of course are based on how the drive worked within the first days or week, not long term like year or 2 or more.

I never tried the Samsung drives yet, I'll take a look at them too.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 11:42 pm

I still like Seagate right now. It's all I buy. WD has disappointed me severely with a horrible failure rate on their MyBook external USB drives.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 2:04 am

I've had every brand fail me so far, so I not a lover of any brand. I just wait for a year after the drives been out, check the reviews, & then try it out. Usually a better price point too.

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:45 pm

I used to buy all Maxtor drives, the ones with 3years, but since seagate bought them I guess they were killed off. I never really had any trouble with those, course they were all Ide drives. That's when I decided to go with Seagates and 5Yrs.

I'll look around, I think a Seagate 640 has tons of good reviews, not too many bad, and was about $60

Right now I am having to clear off a drive to use in my new build, real pain.
I been so dis-organized for years I got 4 copies of this here and 3 copies of that there etc.. all over 6 drives right now!

Need a large drive to put everything on for backup then delete all the copies everywhere I don't need. Then make a new backup of the backup so I have 2 copies I can find!

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 10:28 pm

They still make Maxtors (under the Seagate name), though I'm thinking that they are slowly killing them off. They seem to be pushing them into just external drive duties now. Oh & I've had a few Maxtors die on me. Though I did get past the warranty period though, so it's hard to complain.

The Western Digital 640gb Black edition is getting rave reviews. Not aware of a Seagate one.