Hard Drive Manufacturers Slash Warranty Periods.

[Ponce]

Is not a matter of need but of greed......if the money is really going to R&D then this would mean that the product would be, or is going to be, a lot better so that the guarranties should go up and not down......another way to screwed the American people.......my tp probably has now a warranty of one years instead of twenty five.
===============================================


Hard Drive Manufacturers Slash Warranty Periods.

By Lucas Mearian, Computerworld Dec 16, 2011 4:51 pm

Seagate and Western Digital are cutting back on hard drive warranties, in some instances from five years to one, in order to save money or redirect it to product development.

Seagate's warranties on certain drives will be reduced as of Dec. 31, and WD will follow beginning Jan. 2. All drives shipped prior to those dates will continue to carry the current warranty term associated with the products.

The warranty period reductions, first reported by The Register, mean some of Seagate's and WD's most popular drives for desktops and laptops will no longer carry three- or five-year warranties.

In an email response to Computerworld, Seagate said it was reducing warranty periods as a way to standardize its terms "to be more consistent with those commonly applied throughout the consumer electronics and technology industries.

"By aligning to current industry standards, Seagate can continue to focus its investments on technology innovation and unique product features that drive value for our customers," the company said.

In other words, Seagate is redirecting money previously spent on upholding longer warranties in order to invest in product development.

Seagate is even cutting back the warranty on its hybrid drive, The Momentus XT, which combines NAND flash-based solid state storage with spinning disk.

Seagate's new warranties apply to internal hard drives designed for laptops, desktops and consumer electronics devices. Seagate said there is no warranty change to "mission critical enterprise drives," such as its Cheetah line, or Seagate external drives.

Seagate said it is reducing its warranty periods from five years to three years for nearline products, such as the Constellation 2 series. Even Seagate's new hybrid drive, the Momentus XT , is seeing its warranty period cut from five to three years.

In a more radical move, Seagate will also be changing its warranty policy from five years to one year for certain desktop and notebook drives, such as the Barracuda and Barracuda Green 3.5-inch drives and the Momentus 2.5-inch (5400 and 7200rpm):

Seagate's nearline drives, the Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives, are moving from five- to three-year warranties.

A WD spokesperson, meanwhile, said the company "is continually evaluating the best mix of product and service features that benefit our customer base as a whole."

WD would not give a reason for its warranty change, but the spokesperson denied it had anything to do with flooding in Thailand, which has severely affected the company's ability to manufacture products.

WD is reducing the warranties on its Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue drives from three years to two.

"Standard PC warranties are one year. Even so, WD will continue to maintain five-year warranties on its premium desktop/notebook products, including the WD Caviar Black, WD Scorpio Black and WD VelociRaptor products," a spokesperson wrote in an email reply.

The company is also expected to begin charging for extended warranties, according to a WD distributor's letter to customers.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/246456/hard_drive_manufacturers_slash_warranty_periods.ht ml#tk.rss_news

[Ares]

Makes sense, I would too if I was a hard drive manufacture for the reason that solid state drives are going to be the norm probably in the next 2-3 years.

[Dogman]

Makes sense, I would too if I was a hard drive manufacture for the reason that solid state drives are going to be the norm probably in the next 2-3 years. I wonder if they have solved the write/rewrite life limit ?

[Ponce]

You guys are smart, all that I know is how to turn my lap top on and off......it can also write and a bunch of more stuff that I have never touched, I think that it also had a spy camera that I covered up with black paint......a piece of shewing gum over the mike hole...................................".I want to be left alone" Marlene Ditrich?

[keehah]

Seagate and Western Digital are cutting back on hard drive warranties, in some instances from five years to one, in order to save money or redirect it to product development.
It would not be moral work, but it should be easy work!
Product development to reduce company warranties. ;D

[TheNocturnalEgyptian]

HDDs have doubled or tripled in price recently due to the floods in malaysia. I went to buy a bunch of hard disk drives for some computers I am donating to charity, they're more expensive than they were two years ago.

[vacuum]

All I know is that a terabyte or two is a huge amount of data to lose. No 1 year warranty drive for me. I guess you really need raid.

[Glass]

yes hard drives are in very short supply. prices are 400% higher that 1 year ago. As for warranties I tell people that if the manufacturer only gives 12month warranty then you should expect 12 months out of the item and no more. Plan for 12 months, if you get more it's a bonus.

Seagate have been offering 3 years on a range of product but the reliability is not there. They have longer a warranty range of product and the quality used to be there. Perhaps with all thats happened in thailand they can't even be sure of that product range these days. Good to see WD thinks they can keep a 5yr warranty going.

[Dogman]

yes hard drives are in very short supply. prices are 400% higher that 1 year ago. As for warranties I tell people that if the manufacturer only gives 12month warranty then you should expect 12 months out of the item and no more. Plan for 12 months, if you get more it's a bonus.

Seagate have been offering 3 years on a range of product but the reliability is not there. They have longer a warranty range of product and the quality used to be there. Perhaps with all thats happened in Thailand they can't even be sure of that product range these days. Good to see WD thinks they can keep a 5yr warranty going.

If they cut warrantys but keep build quality , over all MTBF is still good. Just keep them spinning. Unless that has changed, start up used to be the most critical time , plus shock. Have not payed attention much over the last few years. I have one here that is on a old windows 98 machine that has been spinning for the last 10 years.

[Ares]

I wonder if they have solved the write/rewrite life limit ?

Looks like they haven't solved it completely. But they've been able to extend the usage dramatically. This is an article from 2008. Sorry Ponce I don't mean derail the thread if you'd like I can delete this post. Just let me know.

How Long Will Intel's SSDs Last?

SSD lifespans are usually quantified in the number of erase/program cycles a block can go through before it is unusable, as I mentioned earlier it's generally 10,000 cycles for MLC flash and 100,000 cycles for SLC. Neither of these numbers are particularly user friendly since only the SSD itself is aware of how many blocks it has programmed. Intel wanted to represent its SSD lifespan as a function of the amount of data written per day, so Intel met with a number of OEMs and collectively they came up with a target figure: 20GB per day. OEMs wanted assurances that a user could write 20GB of data per day to these drives and still have them last, guaranteed, for five years. Intel had no problems with that.

Intel went one step further and delivered 5x what the OEMs requested. Thus Intel will guarantee that you can write 100GB of data to one of its MLC SSDs every day, for the next five years, and your data will remain intact. The drives only ship with a 3 year warranty but I suspect that there'd be some recourse if you could prove that Intel's 100GB/day promise was false.

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/storage/Intel/SSDlaunch/cycling.png

Just like Intel's CPUs can run much higher than their rated clock speed, Intel's NAND should be able to last much longer than its rated lifespan

It's also possible for a flash cell to lose its charge over time (albeit a very long time). Intel adheres to the JEDEC spec on how long your data is supposed to last on its SSDs. The spec states that if you've only used 10% of the lifespan of your device (cycles or GB written), then your data needs to remain intact for 10 years. If you've used 100% of available cycles, then your data needs to remain intact for 1 year. Intel certifies its drives in accordance with the JEDEC specs from 0 - 70C; at optimal temperatures your data will last even longer (these SSDs should operate at below 40C in normal conditions).

Intel and Micron have four joint fabs manufactured under the IMFT partnership, and these are the fabs that produce the flash going into Intel's SSDs. The 50nm flash used in the launch drives are rated at 10,000 erase/programming but like many of Intel's products there's a lot of built in margin. Apparently it shouldn't be unexpected to see 2, 3 or 4x the rated lifespan out of these things, depending on temperature and usage model obviously.

Given the 100GB per day x 5 year lifespan of Intel's MLC SSDs, there's no cause for concern from a data reliability perspective for the desktop/notebook usage case. High load transactional database servers could easily outlast the lifespan of MLC flash and that's where SLC is really aimed at. These days the MLC vs. SLC debate is more about performance, but as you'll soon see - Intel has redefined what to expect from an MLC drive.

Other Wear and Tear

With no moving parts in a SSD, the types of failures are pretty unique. While erasing/programming blocks is the most likely cause of failure with NAND flash, a secondary cause of data corruption is something known as program disturb. When programming a cell there's a chance that you could corrupt the data in an adjacent cell. This is mostly a function of the quality of your flash, and obviously being an expert in semiconductor manufacturing the implication here is that Intel's flash is pretty decent quality.

Intel actually includes additional space on the drive, on the order of 7.5 - 8% more (6 - 6.4GB on an 80GB drive) specifically for reliability purposes. If you start running out of good blocks to write to (nearing the end of your drive's lifespan), the SSD will write to this additional space on the drive. One interesting sidenote, you can actually increase the amount of reserved space on your drive to increase its lifespan. First secure erase the drive and using the ATA SetMaxAddress command just shrink the user capacity, giving you more spare area.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2614/4

[Dogman]

It looks like lifetime is better now than it was when i last looked into it, Had some machines that used sshd's they were very fast, but lifetimes were a problem with very heavy use over 3 shifts daily. With regular hd's their lifetimes is an open ended question. My post above states that , thinking about it that hd is older than 10 years.

Sshd's are nice, but sooner than later they ARE going to fail, or start becoming limited on data use, so no thanks anytime soon for me.

[steyr_m]

It looks like lifetime is better now than it was when i last looked into it, Had some machines that used sshd's they were very fast, but lifetimes were a problem with very heavy use over 3 shifts daily. With regular hd's their lifetimes is an open ended question. My post above states that , thinking about it that hd is older than 10 years.

Sshd's are nice, but sooner than later they ARE going to fail, or start becoming limited on data use, so no thanks anytime soon for me.

Yeah, I feel the same. I may buy 5 or so HDD's within the next year so I can have a supply for the next 20-30 years (+). I've never had a HDD fail on me yet.

[SLV^GLD]

I've never had a drive fail either and I've had some for over a decade under daily 24/7 use. That said, having worked in repair and having people bring me dead and dying computers for repair I can attest that they do, indeed, fail quite often.

That said again, I keep backups on top of backups. I think if you do not keep backups then your drives are bound to fail.

[steyr_m]

I've never had a drive fail either and I've had some for over a decade under daily 24/7 use. That said, having worked in repair and having people bring me dead and dying computers for repair I can attest that they do, indeed, fail quite often.

That said again, I keep backups on top of backups. I think if you do not keep backups then your drives are bound to fail.

I'm the same too. I back-up everything. With the data sizes in HDD's being so much larger and the prices being so much cheaper -- SSD's do not make sense. Yeah they are faster, but when you are looking at times measured in milli-seconds (or maybe micro-seconds), I don't really care.

[Awoke]

I don't back anything up. I have lost all the family photos I had of my kids growing up and everything.

[steyr_m]

I don't back anything up. I have lost all the family photos I had of my kids growing up and everything.

Wow, sorry to hear about that.

[chad]

i lost everything of my daughter under age 3 other than hospital photos. sucks.

[Awoke]

It sucks but we're still taking new photos.

[Dogman]

Yeah, I feel the same. I may buy 5 or so HDD's within the next year so I can have a supply for the next 20-30 years (+). I've never had a HDD fail on me yet.


Murphy's law # 10####2 states, that if you brag about something in a positive way, that something is soon to screw up! Lifetime tested truth from ME! ;D


Edit: Reading more of this post.

Guys it is cheep to buy a good and big external drive or internal. and use a good backup program. Also burn dvd/cd recovery disks for your system.

I have lost more shit over the years because of computer screw ups that I have lost count.

So get a backup drive usb or internal and setup a automatic scheduled backup program. The price of hard drives will come back down. Any more pictures and personal stuff that does not get changed much I will burn dvd's or cd"s just to be on the safe side.

The only excuse anymore for total loss of personal info is our selfs for not doing our own due diligence.

Just saying.

[steyr_m]

Murphy's law # 10####2 states, that if you brag about something in a positive way, that something is soon to screw up! Lifetime tested truth from ME! ;D

Let if fail. My Laptop and main machine are synched, I do a monthly snap-shot of my data to a remote server, plus I do an annual burn of data to DVD's in case of EMP/CME.

Most of the things I will need for during/post SHTF is printed so I will not need to rely on a computer for usage.

[steyr_m]

Murphy's law # 10####2 states, that if you brag about something in a positive way, that something is soon to screw up! Lifetime tested truth from ME! ;D


Edit: Reading more of this post.

Guys it is cheep to buy a good and big external drive or internal. and use a good backup program. Also burn dvd/cd recovery disks for your system.

I have lost more shit over the years because of computer screw ups that I have lost count.

So get a backup drive usb or internal and setup a automatic scheduled backup program. The price of hard drives will come back down. Any more pictures and personal stuff that does not get changed much I will burn dvd's or cd"s just to be on the safe side.

The only excuse anymore for total loss of personal info is our selfs for not doing our own due diligence.

Just saying.

Well said Dogman. An addendum to what you are saying. My remote server is at my Dad's house. If there is a fire [or theft] at my house my data and all back-ups are gone. I issue this command whenever I want to do a monthly snap-shot.

tar zcvf - /home/steyr_m/ssh-backup/ | ssh steyr_m@the_ip_adresse "cat > the_date_of_backup.tgz"

This way, the server can be in a different city/state/provence . All you need is an old Pentium [mine is a P166], a linux install, and a big HDD attached. [I have an external HDD attached to a USB2 card]

[Ponce]

Hey guys? I would like to put my favorite list in a CD, how do I go about it?........my lap top has a copy dujiki but I have never used it in the four years that I have owned it.

[steyr_m]

Hey guys? I would like to put my favorite list in a CD, how do I go about it?........my lap top has a copy dujiki but I have never used it in the four years that I have owned it.

I don't know, I do not use windows. I can create a Ponce account on my machine. You can encrypt the file and use this command:

scp -p mydata.dat Ponce@my_ip_adresse:

or use PuTTY

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

;-)

[Ponce]

That sounds all Chinese to me......you mean that I have to give you all my favorites for you to do something with it?...... even all my XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX rated sites? hahahahahahahahahahaha.

[Dogman]

Hey guys? I would like to put my favorite list in a CD, how do I go about it?........my lap top has a copy dujiki but I have never used it in the four years that I have owned it.
What kind of favorites list?

[steyr_m]

That sounds all Chinese to me......you mean that I have to give you all my favorites for you to do something with it?...... even all my XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX rated sites? hahahahahahahahahahaha.

That's why I said encrypt it -- I don't want to see your fav's. That's your business. I'm not much on pr0n

[Joe King]

What kind of favorites list?His "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX rated sites" list. lol

[steyr_m]

Hey guys? I would like to put my favorite list in a CD, how do I go about it?........my lap top has a copy dujiki but I have never used it in the four years that I have owned it.

In all honesty, a better way is to have a USB stick and R-click your file and use the "send to" menu to it.

[MAGNES]

HDDs have doubled or tripled in price recently due to the floods in malaysia. I went to buy a bunch of hard disk drives for some computers I am donating to charity, they're more expensive than they were two years ago.

Recently I went out to buy 2 drives, they were double + the price
from 2010 summer, I asked the guy, wtf ? , he told me they
all get their parts from that factory, no parts, no drives .

One factory messed them all up. What happens if that factory disappears ?
Makes you think about other industries and what was done to ours.

That was 3 weeks ago, last night I checked, they are coming down in
price again.

Now this announcement, there is huge demand and this new batch of drives
may have problems I am thinking, lower quality due to manufacturing pressures
meeting demand, to wait before I buy.

[MAGNES]

I don't back anything up. I have lost all the family photos I had of my kids growing up and everything.

When and how , you may be able to get them back, there are tricks.

I lost two drives in a row this spring, I have backups, but I can
still access the data on the drives when I connect them, booting
off a rebuilt drive.

Only thing I care about on my drive is business, photos,
and my pdf books. I just drag and drop these files to two
iomega drives.

Right now I am looking to consolidate some data, want some
sort of RAID 1 backup drive, doing research on this, the simpler
the better.

[Cebu_4_2]

I have 2 drives in my machines, bookmarks or favorites are on the second drive, same goes for pictures, documents, email and anything else important. All my machines use the same main board and OP sys. I learned a long time ago to do this after my main drive crashed. It's not like backing up the whole drive but in a pinch I can drop any drive with an OP sys and still have my important stuff. My main drive has only 32 gigs used which is pretty much just program files with nothing stored on it. I have had 4 main drives die over the years but never a second drive. Every hard drive failure was caused at least partially caused from powersource failures or bad voltages.

[chad]

if a drive crashes, put it in the freezer. you'll probably get 5-10 minutes out of it until it unthaws and crashes again. you can freeze + refreeze multiple times until it fails for good. i once did this on a maxtor 250 and got EVERYTHING off of it. make sure you put it in a ziplock bag before you do it though (prevents condensation, which will really hose it up). i suggest double bagging it just to make sure.

[Ponce]

Sure wish I could do the same with my dick........put it in the freezer and is ready to go in ten minutes, better than Viagra.

[Joe King]

Sure wish I could do the same with my dick........put it in the freezer and is ready to go in ten minutes, better than Viagra.You could actually do that, but it might freeze it in the down position. lol

[steyr_m]

if a drive crashes, put it in the freezer. you'll probably get 5-10 minutes out of it until it unthaws and crashes again. you can freeze + refreeze multiple times until it fails for good. i once did this on a maxtor 250 and got EVERYTHING off of it. make sure you put it in a ziplock bag before you do it though (prevents condensation, which will really hose it up). i suggest double bagging it just to make sure.

I've heard of that before too. I wonder if putting in on dry ice during data extraction would help extend the time that the extraction can be done.

[steyr_m]

I don't back anything up. I have lost all the family photos I had of my kids growing up and everything.

Do you still own the drive? There are people who specialize in retrieving data from dead drives....

[Cebu_4_2]

Do you still own the drive? There are people who specialize in retrieving data from dead drives....

probably can turn it into a second drive and get the stuff off it. And again a power related problem could render a drive wasted but a good powersource could make things fine again. Had a prob with my kids machine, bad drives 3 times when I said enough is enough, swapped an old powersource in and wham everythiing was good again. The giveaway was in a brownout his PC was smoking real bad.

[TomD]

I'm covered up in drives. In my main computer , I have a 120 gig SSHD that holds the OS and programs. Then a 1 T regular drive for all the files. Then I have two 1 T remote drives, neither of which is connected except for backup, then they are kept in a safe. Don't want fire, theft, or lightning strikes to get my backup. Back up to one of the remote drives, alternating, once a week.

I've got better than a decade of work records and several 10's of thousands of image files.

BTW, once you have an SSHD, you won't go back. Everything happens right now, it gets addicting. When ever I use some other computer, I find myself getting impatient. Hell, I almost wander off to fix something to eat while waiting for my wife's laptop to boot. Mine boots in 20-25 seconds and I don't mean to just the start screen, everything is loaded and it's sitting there idling, ready.


probably can turn it into a second drive and get the stuff off it. And again a power related problem could render a drive wasted but a good powersource could make things fine again. Had a prob with my kids machine, bad drives 3 times when I said enough is enough, swapped an old powersource in and wham everythiing was good again. The giveaway was in a brownout his PC was smoking real bad.

Let me guess, HP?

[Ares]

Do you still own the drive? There are people who specialize in retrieving data from dead drives....

I dabble in data recovery of dead drives. If the platters still spin and the armature still functions chances are I can recover data. :) If interested let me know.

[steyr_m]

I dabble in data recovery of dead drives. If the platters still spin and the armature still functions chances are I can recover data. :) If interested let me know.

Yeah and I've seen people with a home-made clean box made with an aquarium looking type thing, some long gloves attached to the wall, and a hepa filter where they removed the platters and installed on a functional drive. Quite cool to see.

[Cebu_4_2]

Let me guess, HP?

I have an HP printer.... Everything else is custom.

[Awoke]

No, it's gone unfortunately.

[keehah]

I think my hard drive is going. Watched lots of video last night. Computer cut out this morning, thought it may have been the battery, but charging did not help. Completely dead.

So I took the advice of this thread and put my MacBook in the fridge for a few hours.

Had to press the start button about a dozen times and it made a 'click sound' for the last half dozen then slowly booted up but its running with a grindy sound, as if the CPU was processing away although my activity software confirms its not..

Thankfully its my internet computer so I have no significant data to worry about.

This post is mainly an FYI if anyone notices I don't respond to the trolling again till some time in 2012; I have not bugged out. ;D

[Dogman]

I think my hard drive is going. Watched lots of video last night. Computer cut out this morning, thought it may have been the battery, but charging did not help. Completely dead.

So I took the advice of this thread and put my MacBook in the fridge for a few hours.

Had to press the start button about a dozen times and it made a 'click sound' for the last half dozen then slowly booted up but its running with a grindy sound, as if the CPU was processing away although my activity software confirms its not..

Thankfully its my internet computer so I have no significant data to worry about. Have not a clue about mac's , are there any diagnostic programs you can run, to identify your problem?

[keehah]

Have not a clue about mac's , are there any diagnostic programs you can run, to identify your problem?
Thanks for the concern. But I have an excellent 'program' to turn to, my friend in the city who runs an IT department and set me up with this one that worked fine for three years.

Its not yet 5 PM here, I figure I'll be a good friend though and wait until he is finished his corporate work hours for the day before I favour him to work for me. ;D

[Dogman]

Thanks for the concern. But I have an excellent 'program' to turn to, my friend in the city who runs an IT department and set me up with this one that worked fine for three years.

Its not yet 5 PM here, I figure I'll be a good friend though and wait until he is finished his corporate work hours for the day before I favour him to work for me. ;D

That kind of technical support usually is the very best kind! ;D