Western Digital Cuts Hard Drive Warranties – Seagate Follows Suit

[linnemeyerhere]

I've had multiple WD 2.5 drives go bad and had to warranty them all. I hated that the drives went south and lost my data, time and money but the warranty was at least a small consolation. Funny thing was I had been a Maxtor man and then Seagate when they bought them but I switched to WD on reputation and then started to have problems. I for one can't wait for 1TB and larger SSD drives to come at deeply discounted pricing only shear volume can bring.....bring it on, I can't wait !

 

[GeneO]

I've had multiple WD 2.5 drives go bad and had to warranty them all. I hated that the drives went south and lost my data, time and money but the warranty was at least a small consolation. Funny thing was I had been a Maxtor man and then Seagate when they bought them but I switched to WD on reputation and then started to have problems. I for one can't wait for 1TB and larger SSD drives to come at deeply discounted pricing only shear volume can bring.....bring it on, I can't wait !

You should always plan for a failure with proper backups. I followed the same path, haven't had any problems with the wdc 3.5".

 

[lehnerus2000]

It's "funny" how that works.
My friend has had multiple Seagate drives die on him (during the past 3 years).

I've got a 320 GB Seagate that still works after 4 years (last time I checked anyway).
I've got it stored because the motherboard in the spare PC died.

My current machine has 3 WD HDDs (1 TB, 1.5 TB & 2 TB).
I haven't had any problems.

 

[SledgeDG]

It's a roll of the dice, I don't think that WDC has built in obsolescence to correspond to the warranty expiration...

I didn't say/imply that. My point is a different one: Why would s/o lower warranty periods other than trying to avoid a massive wave of RMA'd products.

 

[jimbo45]

That's sad knowing that hard drives can be quite unpredictable.

Hi there
In over 40 years of buying all sorts of electronic gizmos I've only ever had ONE piece of equipment fail before I threw the stuff away.

These days manaufacturing process are far more robust -- although back in the far distant past a lot of stuff was "Battleship Engineered" using components highly "over spec".

I wouldn't worry about HDD's warranities being reduced from 5 years to 2 -- in any case a lot of HDD's are so cheap that they are almost "Throw away" items.

I'd suspect very few people are still using computers over 5 years old -- some are but in general people replace this stuff quite frequently anyway.

As far as HDD's are concerned the newer 3TB and bigger are much faster as well and SSD's will also be cheap enough for a lot of users -- no moving parts etc.

I know HDD's fail -- but actually this is quite a RARE occurrance -- what happens is data gets lost / corrupted by USERS or HDD's get damaged by being dropped / coffee spilt on them etc etc.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[GeneO]

wouldn't worry about HDD's warranities being reduced from 5 years to 2 -- in any case a lot of HDD's are so cheap that they are almost "Throw away" items.

Have you looked at the price of new drives lately. Not exactly what I would call throw-away

And just because you replace some or all of the computer, doesn't mean you throw out the hard drive. I have a couple from my last computer, one that is over 5 yrs old.

I would add a big factor to your list of failure reasons: inadequate cooling.

 

[pparks1]

I've yet to ever have a hard drive fail and be replaced by warranty. In fact, I think I have only had 1 physical drive failure in 20+ years of using computers. I think every drive that I have moved from has simply run out of space, was too slow of a performer, or relegated to an older test box.

 

[lehnerus2000]

More complicated

I would add a big factor to your list of failure reasons: inadequate cooling.

Unfortunately it is more complicated that that.
It seems that there is an "ideal" temperature range for HDD longevity.

Here are some "clippings" from a 2007 PDF titled, "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population".

Note:
I have edited these "clippings".

Utilization

​

Temperature

​

Here is the PDF (if people are interested).

View attachment disk_failures.pdf​

 

[vaidas3]

My seagate baracuda died yestarday... First HDD in my personal computer to die.
I have many cases of WD HDD failure at work. well it was going that way from the start with frequent tick tack noise.. probably head hiting platter, now that noise is non stop. Lesson always do a backup . and most HDDs fail at first months or half a year of use (if its bad) later failures is possible but usually happanes because of some bad things, shock, vibration, temperatures etc..

anyway "perfect" timing with that prices of HDD going up.
maybe ill buy SSD

 

[GeneO]

I would add a big factor to your list of failure reasons: inadequate cooling.

Unfortunately it is more complicated that that.
It seems that there is an "ideal" temperature range for HDD longevity.

Here are some "clippings" from a 2007 PDF titled, "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population".

Note:
I have edited these "clippings".

Utilization

View attachment 189535
​

Temperature

View attachment 189536
​

Here is the PDF (if people are interested).

View attachment 189537​

I know it is complicated -too cold a temperature isn't good either. I assume that is the google study you are referring to. Many models of name brand computers sold have inadequate cooling for the hard drives, and they get way too hot - above the low failure region in the study. Some have no forced air flowing over them and the venting doesn't supply enough - I know I have owned some. I had one with vents and no room for fans in the front that would only suck in enough air to cool the drives if the CPU fan was going full blast - with idle CPU it could get to 50c+. That is one of the major reasons I build my own now.

And that is what I am talking about - your average consumer computer, not some custom one where someone has gone to the other extreme like cooling it down to 25c. Commodity consumer computers never have HDD that are "over cooled".

BTW, that is a pretty old study - 6yrs old - on the timescale of technology changes, I wonder if the (exact) results still hold up.

 

[lehnerus2000]

And that is what I am talking about - your average consumer computer, not some custom one where someone has gone to the other extreme like cooling it down to 25c. Commodity consumer computers never have HDD that are "over cooled".

One of the guys on my Networking course claimed he cooled his CPU so much, his machine locked up.

BTW, that is a pretty old study - 6yrs old - on the timescale of technology changes, I wonder if the (exact) results still hold up.

It's dated 2007, but I assume the data was collated prior to that (i.e. 2002 - 2007).
I was wondering if the results still hold up.

 

[GeneO]

And that is what I am talking about - your average consumer computer, not some custom one where someone has gone to the other extreme like cooling it down to 25c. Commodity consumer computers never have HDD that are "over cooled".

One of the guys on my Networking course claimed he cooled his CPU so much, his machine locked up.

BTW, that is a pretty old study - 6yrs old - on the timescale of technology changes, I wonder if the (exact) results still hold up.

It's dated 2007, but I assume the data was collated prior to that (i.e. 2002 - 2007).
I was wondering if the results still hold up.

I looked over the article again (haven't for a couple of years) and found the study was based on data from 2005-2006 which means the drives themselves could have been 2004 or even earlier vintage.

They found that drives older than 3 yrs had a much higher failure rate at 40c+. Now could that have been because they were older vintage technology? I don't know. I try and keep my drives between 35 and 40.

Merry Christmas

 

[lehnerus2000]

It is possible that HDDs are more robust now.
When I first started work as a repair tech (1982) anything over 50°C was "death" for electronics.

My graphics card runs at about 60°C (people tell me that's normal these days).
My HDDs run between 30°C and about 37°C.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Good things are coming down the pike and as quickly as things move we can see these in our rigs in just a year or two!

 

[seekermeister]

At that price, I don't see one in my rig anytime in the near future.

 

[SledgeDG]

At that price I don't see one in my future EVER

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Oh ye of little faith, just as military and commercial uses push technologies economics of scale drive down the cost of expensive items. Take one look at what your 50" LED just cost you and do a little backwards cross shop say 5 years ago. When these are the norm the chip sets cost will tumble. In the racing community it's "Race on Sunday, Showroom on Monday" ! I fully expect to wait longer than a day for this product but it's very reassuring that they are being built at all.

 

[SledgeDG]

You're absolutely right as soon as the price comes down to a more "manageable" size I definitely will have one or two of those babies
But having to support a family automatically excludes me from the "early buyer's list"

-DG