[Lurker1]

It appears that the three year hard drive warranty is no longer the standard for drives sold in the US.

Maxtor - As of October 1, 2002, Maxtor offers a Standard Warranty Period of 1 year on the following ATA drives: Maxtor Fireball, DiamondMax and DiamondMax Plus. Maxtor MaXLine ATA premium drives will carry a Standard Warranty Period of 3 years. Maxtor Atlas SCSI drives will carry a Standard Warranty Period of 5 years.

Seagate - Any Seagate personal storage product (ATA-interface hard drive) carries a one-year warranty if it was shipped on or after October 1, 2002. The one exception is that any Seagate Retail Kit hard drives (manufactured, packaged and distributed by Seagate into retail outlets in the Americas) that still specify a 3-year warranty on the box will, of course, be protected by that specified warranty. SCSI and Fibre Channel hard drive warranties have not changed.

Western Digital - Western Digital standard products manufactured on or after October 1, 2002, carry a one-year warranty and are eligible for extended warranty (except for USB 2.0 and FireWire external drives). WD Special Edition products feature a three-year warranty. Further details may be found at our Web site

The article is here.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/column/...141/index.html

[Davey7549]

Funny all three of the top manufacturers of hard drives decide at the same time and have the same effectivity for warrenty reductions! Could be they been talking to eachother?
Wheres IBM?

Dave

[wedor]

IBM is still at three as is Samsung, my distributor only sells Samsung and WD so I'm buying Samsungs now. I had used IBM almost exclusively for the last 3-4 years.

[Brooks]

Just following the trend that all the big computer makers are now heading. Give them a year and make them bleed for the rest.

[anglin_fool]

This all says only one thing to me . . . Back up your data!

[Rockn]

Add if your tape backups one year warranty has just expired....what then....LOL