Western Digital & Seagate Slash Hard Drive Warranties Again

The Register has dug up information that indicated that first Western Digital, and now Seagate, have instigated new year resolutions for 2012 that’s to trim hard drive warranties across the board. This isn’t the first cut in warranty periods from either vendor, and one has to wonder slightly at the timing of these announcements. Western Digital drives sold after January 2nd and Seagate drives after December 21st will carry the shorter warranties.

Western Digital will be cutting the warranty on Caviar Blue, Caviar Green, and Scorpio Blue drives from a current three years down to two. Only Caviar Black and Scorpio Black hard drives will continue to ship with a five year warranty.

Seagate, perhaps seizing on Western Digital’s announcement, followed up a day later with more drastic cuts. Nearline drives will go from 5 years to 3, Momentus XT & Barracuda XT hybrids from 5 years to 3, and 5 years down to a single year for Barracuda, Barracuda Green, and Momentus drives. Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives will similarly drop to 3 year warranties.

The only option left for consumers looking to snag a hard drive with a five year warranty appears to be the Caviar Black line. Given the Caviar Black’s high price premium ranging from $0.14 to $0.24 cents per GB, the palpability of $1 per GB for many SSDs starts to become a little bit more appealing. By comparison, Intel’s 320 Series SSDs include a five year warranty, while almost every other SSD on the market offers a three year warranty as standard. On the bright side, perhaps these changes will help slightly ameliorate the recent industry-wide hard drive shortages. Either way, one thing is for sure, SSDs are suddenly looking just a bit more attractive.