AfterDawn: News

Update: Seagate refutes claim that they are slashing warranties

In an update to our recent article, Seagate has refuted the claim that they are slashing their warranties to 2 years (from 5) in an effort to cut costs.

In mass tweets sent to journalists, bloggers and others who reported the news, the company says simply: "Rumor's wrong. Seagate retail internal drives still have 5-year warranty."



Original story here claimed:

Seagate has noted today that it will shorten the warranty on most of its consumer series HDDs.

In an effort to reduce costs, the warranties will be reduced from 5 years to just 2 years.

Included in the list are Seagate's most popular drives, the Barracuda 7200.12 and Momentus Green product series.

Barracudas are 3.5-inch form factor and used for desktop builds while the slimmer Momentus are 2.5-inch and used for notebooks, or as slim external drives.

Enterprise models, like the XT series, will keep its five-year warranty.

It is unclear when the new move will go into effect.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 5 Aug 2011 20:14

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• 17 comments

• JohnPaulsen

  Thanks for that clarification Andre, much appreciated.
  - John Paulsen from Seagate

  5.8.2011 20:17 #1

• Mysttic

  No doubt, glad that's cleared up; still its for internal drives only.

  5.8.2011 20:28 #2

• ivymike

  Hey John Paulsen,
  I was wondering if Seagate has improved it's Quality Control dept. in regards to hard drives....I stopped using Seagate hard drives long ago due to instability, poor performance and short lifespan.
  
  This is an ongoing issue not with one Seagate drive I used to own but ALL OF THEM. What's the deal?
  
  I've noticed that Seagate drives are more likely to crash under stress as well as produce bad sectors more frequently than your competitor's drives.
  
  If you want to win me back as a customer, please do something about the reliability or lack therof in regards to your hard disks.
  
  Thanks.

  5.8.2011 20:40 #3

• JohnPaulsen

  Originally posted by Mysttic: No doubt, glad that's cleared up; still its for internal drives only. Hi Mysttic -- there's been no change to warranty on the external hard drives either. : )
  - John

  5.8.2011 20:50 #4

• JohnPaulsen

  Originally posted by ivymike: Hey John Paulsen,
  I was wondering if Seagate has improved it's Quality Control dept. in regards to hard drives....I stopped using Seagate hard drives long ago due to instability, poor performance and short lifespan.
  
  This is an ongoing issue not with one Seagate drive I used to own but ALL OF THEM. What's the deal?
  
  I've noticed that Seagate drives are more likely to crash under stress as well as produce bad sectors more frequently than your competitor's drives.
  
  If you want to win me back as a customer, please do something about the reliability or lack therof in regards to your hard disks.
  
  Thanks. Mike, thanks for your thoughts, we are listening to your input. We always, always are making a huge effort to improve reliability, even when the product line is at peak reliability. I stand by our reliability and assert that on the whole our reliability is second to nobody. While we certainly see more anecdotal groans on the web these days when people have a problem (with all the brands), our percentages are good -- and while our ideal would be a "zero failure rate," keep in mind the number of drives people are using today is humongous compared with 5 or 10 years ago. Seagate shipped about 200 million drives this year, while in 2000 we shipped about 42 million - naturally there'll be some increase in raw numbers of problems when there's a raw increase of 5X the devices sold each year. Hard drives are among the most highly complex devices used by consumers, and are required to execute enormous physical workloads when compared to, say, an LCD TV or an espresso maker, yet they cost far less, and amazingly are less likely to fail than those other consumer electronics devices.
  
  That said, we take your need for reliability extremely seriously and we know you depend on your hard drive to do your work and keep your data safe (but always back up, of course!) We will never, never take that lightly -- believe me, we will always be working to improve every product, every design, every factory process.
  
  Thanks again for your input.
  - John

  5.8.2011 21:10 #5

• pmshah

  Funny thing is that warranty period is different for different countries. As a rule we in India are offered far better terms than in say the US.
  
  Besides this Seagate in one country will not honor its warranty in another country. So what is one to do if one migrates / relocates to another country?

  5.8.2011 23:54 #6

• KillerBug

  I agree that WD 2.5" drives are far, far better than Seagate 2.5" drives, but Seagate 3.5" drives have served me really well, while WD drives have failed me within a day or two frequently. I think the reason so many people have issues with Seagate 3.5" drives is that they need a ton of cooling, and most people just toss them in a 3.5" bay with no cooling or a crummy external enclosure that provides no airflow. Seagate does not exactly help with this...they don't seem to tell people that the drives need additional cooling, and their external enclosures get hot enough to iron clothes.
  
  Still, with proper cooling, a Seagate 3.5" drive can serve you very well. I have a 12U media server full of Seagate drives, plus a banker's box filled with old 250GB-750GB Seagate drives that I simply don't have room for anymore...I have not had a Seagate total failure in over 4 years, and I have only had one Seagate drive that had developed more than a handful of bad sectors in that same time...I had three WD total failures and two Hitachi total failures last year alone, and I had 4 Samsung total failures the previous year. The system once had 4 different brands of drive in it, now they are all Seagate...and the bankers box doesn't have any other drive brands in it because none of the other drives lasted long enough to become outdated...most of them failed completely...the remaining drives had insane numbers of bad sectors.
  
  Now that I know they are willing to keep standing behind their products, I have no problems with continuing to buy 2TB+ 3.5" drives from them. I am not loyal to companies...in fact I was ready to dump them over a change to a warranty that I don't pay the extra money for...and I'll happily dump them if WD ever starts making 3.5" drives that don't have self-destructive firmware that is only there to prevent the use of hardware RAID...but that does not seem very likely; they have been doing that to help push SAS drives for YEARS.
  

  
  

  6.8.2011 00:08 #7

• patrick_

  The problem with Seagate isn't that they need cooling, they just suck. Hitachi is way hotter and never failed on me (running 24/7 in RAID 0 or 5 in an internal lian-li rack with 12cm fan). Samsung (much cooler) isn't bad, but doesn't last as long as Hitachi, though much longer than Seagate.
  Now that Hitachi and Samsung (BTW, these are the cheapest brands) are out of harddrive business, I guess I'll have to switch to WD :(
  

  6.8.2011 03:51 #8

• Mysttic

  I have to admit the Seagate Go's never failed me and I own 2 of em. As long as they keep committing to high quality products, I'll still use Seagate. At the very least I never once had to RMA a Seagate, I only ever RMA'd WD and Maxtor back in the day. And ty John for re-clarifying, glad to see Seagate continued compassion for their products and consumers.

  6.8.2011 18:08 #9

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by patrick_: The problem with Seagate isn't that they need cooling, they just suck. Hitachi is way hotter and never failed on me (running 24/7 in RAID 0 or 5 in an internal lian-li rack with 12cm fan). Samsung (much cooler) isn't bad, but doesn't last as long as Hitachi, though much longer than Seagate.
  Now that Hitachi and Samsung (BTW, these are the cheapest brands) are out of harddrive business, I guess I'll have to switch to WD :( I never had good luck with Hitachi or Samsung...but it doesn't really matter because neither exists anymore. Now the main battle seems to be between Seagate and WD...one has better firmware, the other has better hardware. It almost seems like WD wants to keep Seagate around; a single engineer could probably redo all their firmwares in a week, and make Seagate a completely redundant brand.
  

  
  

  7.8.2011 02:14 #10

• ST2006

  Originally posted by KillerBug: Originally posted by patrick_: The problem with Seagate isn't that they need cooling, they just suck. Hitachi is way hotter and never failed on me (running 24/7 in RAID 0 or 5 in an internal lian-li rack with 12cm fan). Samsung (much cooler) isn't bad, but doesn't last as long as Hitachi, though much longer than Seagate.
  Now that Hitachi and Samsung (BTW, these are the cheapest brands) are out of harddrive business, I guess I'll have to switch to WD :( I never had good luck with Hitachi or Samsung...but it doesn't really matter because neither exists anymore. Now the main battle seems to be between Seagate and WD...one has better firmware, the other has better hardware. It almost seems like WD wants to keep Seagate around; a single engineer could probably redo all their firmwares in a week, and make Seagate a completely redundant brand. I swear there's still a lot of hype around Samsung's spinpoint series????? I've noticed a lot of people buy their 1tb f3 hdds in particular.

  7.8.2011 14:59 #11

• oappi

  @JohnPaulsen
  
  Where i live they actually have only 3 years for most segate drives...
  5 year warranty was the main reason i bought segates (since segate was quite a while only company that offered 5 years for consumer lines), but at the moment segate drives with 5 years warranty are VERY expensive compared to WD offerings. Not even 1TB ES.2 segate gets you 5 year warranty or Seagate Barracuda XT 7200.12 2TB that costs 142€.

  7.8.2011 17:14 #12

• SomeBozo

  I agree Seagate quality over the last few years has faltered. I use to buy Seagate exclusively, over the last 20 years. How ever the last 3 drives i've tried have all failed nearly immediately upon placing the drives in my machine. While they are the large 2TB drives all 3 would be best used as door stops.
  
  In my opinion Seagate use to be great before they started buying up other 3rd party manufacturers Maxtor to be more precice. Many of my friends i've talked with never had bad hard drives from Seagate until Maxtor was bought and sold with a Seagate label...
  
  The only bad thing i have a new seagate drive i need to get replaced, simply starts click, click, click then disappears from the operating system. More interesting if i power off completely for 20 minutes or so the drive always comes back, only to fail again withing 3 minutes or a day or two, but once it fails...
  
  

  8.8.2011 11:52 #13

• JohnPaulsen

  Originally posted by SomeBozo: I agree Seagate quality over the last few years has faltered. I use to buy Seagate exclusively, over the last 20 years. How ever the last 3 drives i've tried have all failed nearly immediately upon placing the drives in my machine. While they are the large 2TB drives all 3 would be best used as door stops.
  
  In my opinion Seagate use to be great before they started buying up other 3rd party manufacturers Maxtor to be more precice. Many of my friends i've talked with never had bad hard drives from Seagate until Maxtor was bought and sold with a Seagate label...
  
  The only bad thing i have a new seagate drive i need to get replaced, simply starts click, click, click then disappears from the operating system. More interesting if i power off completely for 20 minutes or so the drive always comes back, only to fail again withing 3 minutes or a day or two, but once it fails...
  @SomeBozo -- please don't hesitate to hit up Seagate's customer support, they'll be super happy to help troubleshoot what's up with your drive or work on a replacement if needed. You can reach them perhaps most easily/directly on Twitter @AskSeagate or on Facebook http://facebook.com/seagatesupport ...or go the traditional route here: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/

  8.8.2011 12:12 #14

• DrNo123

  Quote:Effective July 2, 2011, Seagate will be changing its distribution warranty policy from 3 years to 2 years for certain desktop and notebook bare drives (see table below).
  
  Barracuda® and Barracuda® Green 3.5” Drives - 2 years
  Momentus® 2.5” Drives (5400 RPM & 7200 RPM) - 2 years This applies for drives sold by official Seagate distributors.
  
  So besides the Retail products most of the hard drives which find their way to the customers now only have 2 years instead of 3. This means all drives being sold by distributors to resellers and then to end-customers.
  
  As this applies to Barracuda (like 7200.12), the Greens and also the 2.5 inch Momentus drives only few non-retail drives remain with 3 or more years.

  1.9.2011 08:20 #15

• ddp

  maybe somebody needs to explain that then.
  

  1.9.2011 23:52 #16

• SomeBozo

  Originally posted by JohnPaulsen: Originally posted by SomeBozo: I agree Seagate quality over the last few years has faltered. I use to buy Seagate exclusively, over the last 20 years. How ever the last 3 drives i've tried have all failed nearly immediately upon placing the drives in my machine. While they are the large 2TB drives all 3 would be best used as door stops.
  
  In my opinion Seagate use to be great before they started buying up other 3rd party manufacturers Maxtor to be more precice. Many of my friends i've talked with never had bad hard drives from Seagate until Maxtor was bought and sold with a Seagate label...
  
  The only bad thing i have a new seagate drive i need to get replaced, simply starts click, click, click then disappears from the operating system. More interesting if i power off completely for 20 minutes or so the drive always comes back, only to fail again withing 3 minutes or a day or two, but once it fails...
  @SomeBozo -- please don't hesitate to hit up Seagate's customer support, they'll be super happy to help troubleshoot what's up with your drive or work on a replacement if needed. You can reach them perhaps most easily/directly on Twitter @AskSeagate or on Facebook http://facebook.com/seagatesupport ...or go the traditional route here: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/ Thanks for the information, just got off the phone regarding getting a replacement drive. To be honest it was on of the worse customer service experiences i've had. On my invoice from Newegg it clearly says to contact seagate, then when i call the rep told me to contact newegg. Finally speaking with a supervisor cleared up the BS. Again i would say it was one of the worse, most drawn out warranty returns i've ever had, a call i thought should only take 10 to 15 minutes dragged out to nearly an hour.
  
  I could go on about how bad it was, but if i can't say anything good i'd rather go spend my time doing something else.
  

  17.11.2011 16:10 #17