Maxtor follows Seagate.......

[BaumerX]

Maxtor Rethinks Warranty to Stay Competitive
ChannelTimes
By Clyde Fernandes
Mumbai, August 28, 2004

http://www.channeltimes.com/ch...sp&storyid=904267


With the warranty factor hotting up the HDD market, Maxtor is set to join the bandwagon by extending the warranty on its entire range of entry-level drives.

According to Maxtor sources, its entry-level hard disk drives, which come with a one-year warranty, will now be available with a three-year warranty. The new warranty will be applicable worldwide including India.

The hard disk drive and storage solutions manufacturer is likely to officially announce the decision by the first week of September.

Maxtor's DiamondMax and MaxLine hard disk drive products are already available with three years' warranty, while its Atlas SCSI drives come with a five-year warranty.

This move is seen, in part, as a response to Seagate's five-year warranty extension announced in July. Incidentally, Western Digital, another hard disk manufacturer, plans to set up an office in India.

Maxtor recently announced that it has started shipping its 300 Gb Diamond Max 10 HDDs, which come with a 16MB buffer. These drives use single-chip Serial ATA technology and are targeted at PC users, system integrators, graphic artists and other multimedia PC users.

 

[Schadenfroh]

w00t

 

[stultus]

I :heart: Seagate, and I :heart: competition.

 

[nick1985]

:thumbsup:

 

[chilled]

Seagate's drives cost a bit more than the rivals here in the UK, but with a 5 year warranty these drives are so good value now. I picked up a nearly new 7200.7 drive with a one year warranty (before Seagate's announcement) so I hope it lasts...but since Seatgate seem to be confident in their drives oh well.

 

[CraigRT]

No Maxtor drive will last 5 years!

 

[CVSiN]

good news =)

 

[Carbonadium4]

too late now losers (maxtor & wd).. dont buy from maxtor.. if they didn't start the warranty trend, they dont deserve our business... especially WD for pulling that crap on 1 year

 

[soulflyfan]

good news. still gonna go seagate. you can pick up 160GB 8MB cache for £63(IDE) and £70(SATA). long live value!!!

 

[sharkeeper]

Since when does 3=5? IMO, unless they go to five years across the board, they aren't competitive.

Cheers!

 

[cronos]

haha... good news. 3 != 5 but at least it's a start. 1 year is just crappy.

 

[Pariah]

These shifts in warranty policies mean absolutely nothing as far as the reliable of the drives go when compared to themselves or to their competitors. Nor do they imply confidence or lack of it in the product by the manufacturing company. When the warranty dropped, nothing about the drive production process changed. Now that they are going back up, still nothing will change about how the drives are made. Warranties are nothing more than a dollar figure on the expense report of hard drive companies. The reason Seagate can afford the 5 year policy has nothing to do with having more reliable drives (even if they actually are, which none of us really know), they are a significantly larger company than Maxtor and Western Digital, so they can absorb a larger hit from warranty replacements. It would be like if Intel started offering 10 year warranties all on their retail CPU's. There's no way AMD could afford to follow, but does that mean their CPU's were any less reliable or that AMD had less confidence in their product? Unless you actually plan on using your ATA drive beyond 3 years, which wouldn't seem like a frequent occurence in the enthusiast market, having a 50 year warranty wouldn't make much of a difference.

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: Pariah
These shifts in warranty policies mean absolutely nothing as far as the reliable of the drives go when compared to themselves or to their competitors. Nor do they imply confidence or lack of it in the product by the manufacturing company. When the warranty dropped, nothing about the drive production process changed. Now that they are going back up, still nothing will change about how the drives are made. Warranties are nothing more than a dollar figure on the expense report of hard drive companies. The reason Seagate can afford the 5 year policy has nothing to do with having more reliable drives (even if they actually are, which none of us really know), they are a significantly larger company than Maxtor and Western Digital, so they can absorb a larger hit from warranty replacements. It would be like if Intel started offering 10 year warranties all on their retail CPU's. There's no way AMD could afford to follow, but does that mean their CPU's were any less reliable or that AMD had less confidence in their product? Unless you actually plan on using your ATA drive beyond 3 years, which wouldn't seem like a frequent occurence in the enthusiast market, having a 50 year warranty wouldn't make much of a difference.

With all that being said..... 3 year vs 1 year warranty ... that's the reason I bough a WD drive 2 months ago instead of a Maxtor. I prefer Maxtor drives but 1 year warranty just didnt do it for me,i cant afford to buy a new hd evey year so maxtor didnt get my $$$.

 

[Pariah]

I would never buy a drive with a 1 year warranty either. I use basically all my drives beyond 1 year. But the difference between a 3 and 5 year warranty for ATA drives is negligible. I use SCSI drives beyond 3 years for boot drives on older systems, but ATA drives which I use for storage are too small for that purpose after 3 years and just collect dust in a corner.

Also, every drive manufacturer has had a 3 year warranty policy on at least one line of their drives, so not sure why Maxtor decided to not sell any to you.

 

[sharkeeper]

There is nothing more annoying than having a drive fail and then getting slapped in the face when you check the warranty status and it says it expired a month ago!!! (Thanks WDC)

I couldn't tell you how many magnets I have from drives that were out of warranty. These would have been replaced with working models if the warranty was 3 years let alone five!

The replacements often work longer than the originals with the exception of a few WD's that UPS played field hockey with.

I will buy Seagates from now on. I will switch to Hitachi if they go five years just based on the performance.

For my personal use, I prefer SCSI of course.

Cheers!

 

[Quasmo]

I LOVE the fact that there is a HUGE Segate AD right in the middle of the page, stating how they have a 5 year warranty. OH SWEET IRONY!!!!

 

[CeilingHoles]

Originally posted by: CraigRT
No Maxtor drive will last 5 years!

Yep.I hear about Maxtors going dead all the time...never a seagate.

 

[Carbonadium4]

i used all of them.. and yes my baracuda 180gb scsi died but it had 5 year scsi warranty.. i rmaed 2 7200.7 off seagate but these are system that stay on 24/7 for the last 2 year, except for power outages.. all brand will die.. its not luck its just mechanical

 

[wetcat007]

Originally posted by: Carbonadium4
i used all of them.. and yes my baracuda 180gb scsi died but it had 5 year scsi warranty.. i rmaed 2 7200.7 off seagate but these are system that stay on 24/7 for the last 2 year, except for power outages.. all brand will die.. its not luck its just mechanical

I've had drives work 24/7 for 10 years minus power outages, it is somewhat luck.

 

[thorin]

I knew they'd end up going back this way (1 > 3) when they down graded (3 < 1) them a few years ago. What a bunch of gunkies.

Thorin

 

[0roo0roo]

hah, hopefully they have the quality to back it up. i just lost two maxtors. one a less then 1yr old rma at that

 

[Mullzy]

Considering the fact I've had to RMA a Maxtor HD within 8 months TWICE in the last two years... I've switched to Seagate.

 

[Arcanedeath]

A picture studio works right next to where I work and they've had 3 maxtor drives fail on them recently (2 160's w/ 8mb buffers and a 200 w/ 8meg buffer), both of the 160's were out of warrenty, and one was like 10 days out of warrenty man were they unhappy, they've stoped buying Maxtors now and just get Seagate and WD.

 

[KenSr]

Up for Seagate

 

[mechBgon]

The 5-year warranty on the 7200.7, and its fluid-bearing present &amp; future quietness, were two reasons I got an 80GB 7200.7 for my middle sister's new computer. She will probably keep it that long, too. Hmm... must... print... Newegg invoice

edit: ahh, BaumerX has found the Cheetah avatar, how fitting