Western Digital last week announced plans to slash warranties across the board and offer customers the chance to buy these back. It was a below-the-belt cost cutting method that could even turn around to make them a profit. Seagate has reportedly been up to the exact same thing. An extract from Seagate to its partners states that:
“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 hard drives which get massacred the most are the Barracuda Green drives which decline from a 5 year warranty to just a 1 year warranty. The 2.5″ Momentus drives also suffer the same fate. The full list of warranty alterations is as follows ( remember they all previously had 5 year warranties):
- 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 (5400 and 7200rpm): 1 year
- Momentus XT: 3 years
- SV35 Series – Video Surveillance: 2 years
- Pipeline HD Mini, Pipeline HD: 2 years
