Seagate HD 5 year warranty?

"Dave" wrote in message
...
I just saw Seagate hard drives at Comp USA for some great prices and
noticed that Seagate offers a five year warranty as compared to
Western Digital's and Maxtor's one year.

Are Seagate drives really more reliable than WD and Maxtor?

Doubt it, there's really little difference vendor to vendor, mostly
marketing hype. Heck, I just had the Seagate 300GB HD in my Tivo start
coming down w/ bad sectors. Every time I repair the drive, I get more bad
sectors in 1-2 days, and my Tivo shuts down and then fails to reboot. Looks
like I'll be RMA'ing this 1yr old Seagate in the next few days.

Given that Seagate costs about the same as WD, and less than Maxtor, and
reliability is similar, there's little reason not to go w/ Seagate. The 1 yr
warranties are just too short, too many HDs fail in that 1-2 yr timeframe to
consider any HD w/ less than 3 yrs (imo). If reliability is an issue, then
the right approach is not trying to find the best HD, they all suck (let's
be honest, the technology at this price level is barely adequate), instead
protect yourself w/ RAID, backup software, external HDs, full/incremental
backups, etc. IOW, redundancy is far more crucial given the sorry state of
the technology.

JMTC

Jim

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 21:55:50 -0800, "Jim" wrote:


"Dave" wrote in message
.. .
I just saw Seagate hard drives at Comp USA for some great prices and
noticed that Seagate offers a five year warranty as compared to
Western Digital's and Maxtor's one year.

Are Seagate drives really more reliable than WD and Maxtor?

Doubt it, there's really little difference vendor to vendor, mostly
marketing hype. Heck, I just had the Seagate 300GB HD in my Tivo start
coming down w/ bad sectors. Every time I repair the drive, I get more bad
sectors in 1-2 days, and my Tivo shuts down and then fails to reboot. Looks
like I'll be RMA'ing this 1yr old Seagate in the next few days.

Given that Seagate costs about the same as WD, and less than Maxtor, and
reliability is similar, there's little reason not to go w/ Seagate. The 1 yr
warranties are just too short, too many HDs fail in that 1-2 yr timeframe to
consider any HD w/ less than 3 yrs (imo). If reliability is an issue, then
the right approach is not trying to find the best HD, they all suck (let's
be honest, the technology at this price level is barely adequate), instead
protect yourself w/ RAID, backup software, external HDs, full/incremental
backups, etc. IOW, redundancy is far more crucial given the sorry state of
the technology.

JMTC

Jim

Thanks Jim.

I agree wholeheartedly about backups. This drive will be used as a
backup drive in a seldom used, networked comp that I can Ghost images
from my main comps to. That's really why I am more concerned with
reliability for this particular drive.

IMHO, Seagate and WD are two of the best HD on the market regardless of
their differing warrantees. They are the only two manufacturers I buy
because I trust them and have never been burned by either. I have never had
either manufactures drives fail on me but rather changed them out because of
out growing them. Maxtor on the other hand is one of the worst. I have had
3 fail all due to bad quality circuit boards. Each Maxtor that has failed,
I have been able to repair simply by heating up the solder joints on the
board. It seems to me that this is a manufacturer defect and though the
boards are likely subbed out to another manufacturer, the allowable
tolorance specifications come from Maxtor.

Steve

"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 21:55:50 -0800, "Jim" wrote:


"Dave" wrote in message
. ..
I just saw Seagate hard drives at Comp USA for some great prices and
noticed that Seagate offers a five year warranty as compared to
Western Digital's and Maxtor's one year.

Are Seagate drives really more reliable than WD and Maxtor?

Doubt it, there's really little difference vendor to vendor, mostly
marketing hype. Heck, I just had the Seagate 300GB HD in my Tivo start
coming down w/ bad sectors. Every time I repair the drive, I get more bad
sectors in 1-2 days, and my Tivo shuts down and then fails to reboot.
Looks
like I'll be RMA'ing this 1yr old Seagate in the next few days.

Given that Seagate costs about the same as WD, and less than Maxtor, and
reliability is similar, there's little reason not to go w/ Seagate. The 1
yr
warranties are just too short, too many HDs fail in that 1-2 yr timeframe
to
consider any HD w/ less than 3 yrs (imo). If reliability is an issue,
then
the right approach is not trying to find the best HD, they all suck (let's
be honest, the technology at this price level is barely adequate), instead
protect yourself w/ RAID, backup software, external HDs, full/incremental
backups, etc. IOW, redundancy is far more crucial given the sorry state
of
the technology.

JMTC

Jim

Thanks Jim.

I agree wholeheartedly about backups. This drive will be used as a
backup drive in a seldom used, networked comp that I can Ghost images
from my main comps to. That's really why I am more concerned with
reliability for this particular drive.

On Sat, 04 Feb 2006 23:45:38 GMT, "Steve W"
wrote:

IMHO, Seagate and WD are two of the best HD on the market regardless of
their differing warrantees. They are the only two manufacturers I buy
because I trust them and have never been burned by either. I have never had
either manufactures drives fail on me but rather changed them out because of
out growing them. Maxtor on the other hand is one of the worst. I have had
3 fail all due to bad quality circuit boards. Each Maxtor that has failed,
I have been able to repair simply by heating up the solder joints on the
board. It seems to me that this is a manufacturer defect and though the
boards are likely subbed out to another manufacturer, the allowable
tolorance specifications come from Maxtor.


I tend to disbelieve Maxtor specs anything that would
"allow" for worse solder joints. Perhaps they contracted
out to a poor manufacturer, but this is the first I've heard
of any bad solder joint problem and tons of people are using
Maxtor drives... lost count how many are here but they're
all within expected (good/low) failure rates.