[Nwxffgke]

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/24645...ml#tk.rss_news

[Assauraarguck]

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.

[AutocadOemM]

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 ?

[Usendyduexy]

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?

[OQmYckYz]

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.

[Creva4k]

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.

[Phoneemer]

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.

[SkapySisy]

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.

[VIAGRA-VIAGRA]

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.

[nermise]

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.



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

[shinesw]

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.

[vqIo7X2U]

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.

[77Dinaartickire]

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.

[cookiemonster]

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.

[Ecurrexchangess]

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

[lopushok]

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.

[cigattIcTot]

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

[ElenaEvgeevna]

It sucks but we're still taking new photos.

[steansathtpos]

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!


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.

[CVEGK7mV]

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!

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.