In an interesting turn of events, Seagate changes their basic warranty support on all drive purchased after January 2, 2009. This is especially interesting to me because Seagate was touting their hard drive reliability a couple of years ago by upgrading their basic warranties from 3 years to 5 years. I am a little concerned about what this means.

They claim in their Partner Email that the adjustment is to bring them back in line with industry standards. In fact, here is what they say:

Seagate Updates Warranty Terms on Select Bare Drives

Starting in 2009, Seagate will be making some important changes to its limited warranty terms for selected bare drive products.

For products purchased on or after January 3, 2009, the limited warranty period for consumer electronics, notebook and personal storage bare drives sold to Seagate Authorized Distributors will be changed from 5 to 3 years. Seagate believes that the new warranty period and terms better reflect current industry standards.

Seagate enterprise drives and Seagate and Maxtor external retail products that have 5-year warranty periods will not be affected by this change.

If you have any questions, please contact your Authorized Seagate Distributor or consult the Seagate Partner Warranty Information page here.

As most of my readers know, Data Lodge performs noninvasive data recoveries for its clients. We have seen just about everything when it comes to failing or failed hard drives. Lately, we have noticed that several of the seagate models that have come in are unrecoverable by noninvasive techniques. This alone would not be so concerning except that it coincides with the merger between Seagate and Maxtor. When that happened, the drive quality dropped in our direct experience. I'm afraid that Seagate may be adjusting their warranty because they have less faith in their consumer line-up of drives than they used to. If this is the case, it would be very wise to look for a backup solution on your home computer unless you feel like losing data. Seagate consumer drives are very widely used by Dell and HP in almost all models of their laptops and desktops.

Don't get me wrong, I really do like Seagate's enterprise offerings. In fact, we use seagate enterprise grade drives in many of our systems. Don't worry, the enterprise products warranty has not changed so I am sure they still have full faith in these product lines. I know I do.

Anyway, the point is, don't get left without data protection unless your data simply does not matter to you. Hard Drives have moving parts and they cannot help but eventually fail. It is in their design.

If you are looking for a better backup solution, try Data Lodge free for 30 days.

In the meantime, please stay safe this Holiday Season!

-The Concierge

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