About Seagates 5 year warranty...

[Mats]

From the Inquirer. Good to know, although the fact that all products from a manufacturer aren't treated equal is nothing new and unique...

[mathias]

If OEM drives are configured specifically for the needs of who is going to use them, then why don't those bastards tweak some specifically for us?

[Tyrdium]

Are you ordering thousands of them at a time?

[mathias]

What difference does it make? They could still sell lots of them, they probably already do sell quieter drives to some assemblers. I think they just prefer to make the drives horribly inconsistant and send unusually good ones to reviewers. I wonder if they also do this for performance reviews?

[Tyrdium]

What difference does it make?

Well, they'd need to put out a lot more product lines, for one thing.

They could still sell lots of them, they probably already do sell quieter drives to some assemblers.

I'm sure they've already done a cost-benefit analysis and determined it isn't worth it.

I think they just prefer to make the drives horribly inconsistant and send unusually good ones to reviewers. I wonder if they also do this for performance reviews?

Probably. Unfortunately, many companies do. The Consumer Reports method is good, but expensive.

[mathias]

Actually, they might not need to put out more production lines, remember that one really quiet chinese made 80 gig 7200.7 that was mentioned recently? They seem not to have comented about it. I would think that Seagate, who boast about being the worlds biggest hard drive maker would have many different factories. Too bad all those products have the vague label "made in china", I guess that's all they're required to say.

Even if that drive was an anamoly, I don't think it would take a lot of effert to produce quiet versions of drives, all they'd have to do is take the quitest of the motors they use, match it with quiet firmware, and whatever other components vary.

Yes, other manufacturers do this to, and I do think Samsung are also being jerks about it(even though I like to blame JVC for it, especially since their stereos and VCRs are crap too), but they don't make it as hard to avoid the hard drive lottery. Unfortunately, a lot of stores(at least near me) make it hard by not having 160 gig spinpoints.

[Rusty075]

Seagate does not make different "secret" versions of the same model drive.

The OEM vs. Retail warranty difference is designed to prevent big customer OEM's from flooding the retail market with the drives that they bought cheap in bulk. Nearly every HDD manu does this....and have since they all dropped the long warranties a few years back. This is not news.

That would drive the price down, eliminating the profit margin that the manufacturers enjoy when they sell the exact same product through retail channels to the consumer.

And review samples generally come from resellers, not the HDD manufacturer themselves. The retailers just grab them from the same big-o-bin of HDD's as the ones anyone else can buy.

[ChucuSCAD]

In general don't order from CDW. They make their business by being able to overnight pretty much anything from a spindle of CD's - 200 servers to your doorstep. With that comes a huge premium.

Now to comment on what has been said in this thread....

Despite what INQ. said. The PHYSICAL drive in an OEM and a fancy RETAIL BOX is EXACTLY the same, now remember that most OEMs do not buy the "good line" of drives that we all like to get, just like cars - honda makes a civic , accord , and the S2000. OEMs tend to be the civics where WE tend to be the accord on S2000 buyers. OEMs get a short warrenty to reduce cost, also an OEM is likey to have a very short shelf life(wait time to be used). On the other hand a RETAIL box might sit in a warehouse somewhere until a retail store needs one. Why is this important? Because HD warrenties are from DATE OF PRODUCTION. It has ALWAYS been this way, ALWAYS.

Now if you like I can also provide a lengthy history on HD warrenties and how they got to this point....but really its in the past and noone should care.


chucuSCAD

[mathias]

Despite what INQ. said. The PHYSICAL drive in an OEM and a fancy RETAIL BOX is EXACTLY the same, now remember that most OEMs do not buy the "good line" of drives that we all like to get, just like cars - honda makes a civic , accord , and the S2000. OEMs tend to be the civics where WE tend to be the accord on S2000 buyers.

If they're identical, how do OEM's get worse drives? I think what you're trying to say is they're identical manufacturing procedure, except we get the high grade drives, the way good athlonXP's are picked out for mobiles, right?

I don't see how they'd test for reliability or if there would be variances in speed, unless higher vibration made a drive less reliable. My hypothesis is that manufacturers get drives that are slower or with the AAM turned up higher because it makes them more reliable, while drives sold to consumers are tweaked for MHz junkies. Also, I suspect that PVR manufacturers are picking out the quiet drives, that would explain an apparent decrease in the amount of Nidec motors.

[Rusty075]

If they're identical, how do OEM's get worse drives?

They specify the lower rung models, not variations of the same model. (note the car analogy)

Seagate is not spending time testing the drives before deciding where to send them to. You would have to devote way too much time to that, and the profit margin per drive is tiny.

You may have something with the Nidec motor point though. That's the sort of thing that an OEM could probably specify. But picking "quiet" vs "loud", or "fast" vs "slow", nope. (a major goal of manufacturers everywhere is to reduce variation in the production runs, not encourage it)

[ChucuSCAD]

Despite what INQ. said. The PHYSICAL drive in an OEM and a fancy RETAIL BOX is EXACTLY the same, now remember that most OEMs do not buy the "good line" of drives that we all like to get, just like cars - honda makes a civic , accord , and the S2000. OEMs tend to be the civics where WE tend to be the accord on S2000 buyers.

If they're identical, how do OEM's get worse drives? I think what you're trying to say is they're identical manufacturing procedure, except we get the high grade drives, the way good athlonXP's are picked out for mobiles, right?

mathias you are 100% incorrect. the OEM and RETAIL DRIVE come off the SAME LINE, the only difference is that the RETAIL ones go into fancy boxing.

What I am saying is that a drive maker makes more then one MODEL of drive. You obviously did not make the connection with my car comparison. IE the big OEM's want to be able to say 80GB 7200RPM. Well most drive makers make a 2MB cache drive and an 8MB cache drive, well the 2MB cache drive is cheaper and thus is most commonly used in OEM systems.

As for "cherry picking" drives. They don't have the capacity to do this, all drives are simply tested for basic function.

As for the nidec motors that is a model varient and can be specified when ordering.

chucuSCAD

[wing]

If the OEM drives really are worse it'll be total chaos.

Around here, it seems that
- all real computer stores (even biggish franchise stores like CompuSmart) sell only OEM drives
- the only stores which sell retail boxes are stationery / "consumer electronics" stores (e.g., Staples, Future Shop, etc.)

[mathias]

Despite what INQ. said. The PHYSICAL drive in an OEM and a fancy RETAIL BOX is EXACTLY the same, now remember that most OEMs do not buy the "good line" of drives that we all like to get, just like cars - honda makes a civic , accord , and the S2000. OEMs tend to be the civics where WE tend to be the accord on S2000 buyers.

If they're identical, how do OEM's get worse drives? I think what you're trying to say is they're identical manufacturing procedure, except we get the high grade drives, the way good athlonXP's are picked out for mobiles, right?

mathias you are 100% incorrect. the OEM and RETAIL DRIVE come off the SAME LINE, the only difference is that the RETAIL ones go into fancy boxing.

What I am saying is that a drive maker makes more then one MODEL of drive. You obviously did not make the connection with my car comparison. IE the big OEM's want to be able to say 80GB 7200RPM. Well most drive makers make a 2MB cache drive and an 8MB cache drive, well the 2MB cache drive is cheaper and thus is most commonly used in OEM systems.

Okay, I missed the implied distinction between big assemblers and plain box retail versions the first time when you refered to both of them as OEM's, no need to dwell on it.

As for "cherry picking" drives. They don't have the capacity to do this, all drives are simply tested for basic function.

If they are tested for basic function, then I don't think a simple vibration test would be all that hard.

[Mats]

mathias you are 100% incorrect. the OEM and RETAIL DRIVE come off the SAME LINE, the only difference is that the RETAIL ones go into fancy boxing.

....er, what about this? Seagate says the opposite:

All the drives shipped to OEM are not exactly sold as a system component. Those drives are manufactured exclusively for the requirement of the distributors and it is not the normal manufacturing by Seagate. So even they come in retail package, these drives show 'component'.

The fact that a retail packaged HD won't have the 5 year warranty is the reason for this post. I wanted to show that it can be harder to find out which kind of warranty you'll get than you think.

But if you just want to call The Inquirer fiction and nothing else, that's fine by me.

Or should it be "So even [if] they come in retail package, these drives show 'component'"? I gues those Inquirer guys were in a hurry when writing this...
....maybe it's BS after all...

Edit: I mean, The Inquirer is a lot about rumours and fiction AFAIK.

[Rusty075]

Yeah, I'm not really sure why the boys at TheInq got wound up about it: its nothing new, its nothing secret, and several of the other HDD makers do it too. I dunno, must have been a slow day.

I guess it just reinforces the idea of always reading the fine print. I remember people having similar troubles when they realised that Samsung offered different warranties on different HDD's. Buyer beware, as always.

This did stray a bit from your original point Mats, sorry. Which was a very good point indeed.

[Mats]

Yeah, I'm not really sure why the boys at TheInq got wound up about it: its nothing new, its nothing secret, and several of the other HDD makers do it too. I dunno, must have been a slow day.

As I said in the first post, this is nothing new and unique. This article though suggests that you can't be really sure if you got the 5 year warranty or not until you check with Seagate, that's at least news for me.

[Rusty075]

This article though suggests that you can't be really sure if you got the 5 year warranty or not until you check with Seagate, that's at least news for me.

Good point, but I bet if you check the fine print on the box the warranty information is available before you buy it. Considering the litigious world we live, it would have to be. But then again...who reads the fine print on the back of their shiny new HDD box?

[Mats]

This is crazy! The next time I buy one I'll ask for a computer in the store so I can check the actual HD at Seagate.com!

[Mats]

I just checked my ST3160023A that came in what I'd call an OEM package, the SeaShell (I think that's the name). No cables, nuts or manuals. To my surprise it had a Seagate warranty, didn't think it would have it since it was the cheapest I could find at that time. But then again, the warranty will expire in three months so I don't care that much (bought in february).

[Tibors]

I don't think the OEM version comes in a SeaShell. AFAIK they come with several drives on a tray in a cardboard box.

[Jan Kivar]

Seagate does not make different "secret" versions of the same model drive.

The OEM vs. Retail warranty difference is designed to prevent big customer OEM's from flooding the retail market with the drives that they bought cheap in bulk. Nearly every HDD manu does this....and have since they all dropped the long warranties a few years back. This is not news.

That would drive the price down, eliminating the profit margin that the manufacturers enjoy when they sell the exact same product through retail channels to the consumer.

IMO the point is that every HD manufacturer needs to keep substantial amount of assets to be able to replace/refund all drives (in case one drive series would all break down in three months etc.). OEMs can buy the drives nearly without any warranty (the period is short, like 3-12 months). This enables the OEMs to get the drives at a lower price, as the HD manufacturer doesn't have to retain so much to the assets and is able to sell the drive at a lower price.

So, the OEM is responsible for the warranty of a OEM drive. Buy a Dell w/ three year warranty; I'm pretty sure that Dell covers at least two years of the warranty. Win-win situation for Dell and the HD manufacturer, but what happens if one happens replace the noisy Maxtor (I don't mean that all Maxtors would be noisy, and/or that Dell uses solely Maxtor drives) in one's Dell for a Samsung, and throws the Maxtor to eBay? OEM drive with NO warranty.

Cheers,

Jan

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello:

The Inquirer has word of a retraction on the issues with getting the 5 year warranty honored by Seagate -- they were apparently *very* helpful, and acknowledged a small database problem, on their part.