Tipstaff

Not too sure if this is the right place for this, but.. oh well.

I got news today that Seagate has a couple changes coming up when the new year rolls around.

First, THIS piece of news seems to have gone right by a lot of us, and I had no clue about it until I was hit with it yesterday by my supplier. It seems Seagate will no longer be offering 5 year warranties on their consumer drives, leaving that warranty to their Enterprise drives (which, funny enough, they went up in price recently. Coincidence?). All their consumer level drives will now come with a 3 year warranty (unless they state otherwise on a drive by drive basis). Existing warranties will not be touched, thank God.

Second, anyone remember the news about Seagate that they were going to stop making IDE drives by years end 2007, and then didn't? Well they are now. Again my supplier is telling me that Seagate has stated that they will be stopping production of all IDE/PATA desktop 3.5" hard drives (IDE/PATA 2.5" drives to follow later) FOR SURE this time. 2008 will be the last year for Seagate IDE drives. In anticipation of this Seagate lowered production on those drive types, and in turn their IDE/PATA drives of all types (2.5" and 3.5") have gone up in price by as much as 30%.

Just thought I'd let everyone know. If I find a confirmation piece of news on the net for the second piece I'll post back here with it.

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BlueMak

Me don't like.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

GigaWatt

who does... although i've never been much of a Seagate consumer (except for my first HDD), still, the fact that they dropped production of IDE/PATA HDDs is not good... i wonder if there is anyone out there that still makes them?

i was always fascinated by the Quantum Fireball series... noisy little ba*ta*ds, but they still did the job quite well... i have a couple of them still working .

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It's not schisophrenia... it's just a voice in my head...

Judas

i'm not overly concerned about either of them..

frankly i haven't sold a IDE drive for ages.... and anyone that has wanted one... hasn't wanted anything expensive... therefore a 2nd hand one has also been the choice.

As for the warranty, 5 year drop to 3 year isn't to much of a concern cause quite often i've seen drives fail within the first year or 2.... 3 would be gratus imo.... 5 year warranty while would be nice, i think it's a little over the top. What's a guarantee worth anyways? Warranty is all fine and dandy, but unnessary for alot of the products... just don't get the cheap sob's.... then again, the cheap sob's are usually 30 days anyways.

Still alot better then OEM prebuilt warranty, some of thier fine print from compaq or whatever has stated hardrive failure within 1 year is the maximum, even if extended warranty is provided on the rest of the system. WTF?

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Judas

My first true HD i used was a seagate... 6.4gb.... and the damn thing kept showing bad sectors..... got it replaced only to experience the same damn thing.. then i swore off seagate cause seriously.... it just pissed me off and i didn't know much of anything at the time.... first time dealing with hardrives..

went maxtor... had only 3 out of maybe 30 drives oventually fail....

Went from maxtor to WD for some 160gb IDE drives with the 8mb cache, used them in raid 0 for my first media center machine...... not sure where those drives went now..... someone bought them....hmm..


Went from that back to some maxtor drives until the last set of SATA1 drives i got, wasn't to pleased with thier results.... good.. but not great....

Then dived back into seagate, 7200.10's were my first seagate drives for ages..... picked them up after seeing some of thier results. Out of i think about 20 of those specific drives, i've had 1 fail, replaced under warranty, took 5 months to get to seagate in the states... about 3000 miles, and 2 weeks to get back to me as a new refurbed unit. That unit has been working great since.

And now the 7200.11's which still are outperforming (for me in any of the tests i've ran).... anything else out there. Zero drive failures yet and i've moved i think about 12 of them 500gb models.

Actually i've got 4 here right now, 2 in each machine.. raid 1.... even in raid 1... they are still freaking fast..... nice having a good Raid controller though.

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BlueMak

For me it is a bit different. Even if the HDD fails within the first year, I am not going to have it replaced/RMAed due to being paranoid and all.
The only thing that worries me is that the actualy quality will suffer.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

GigaWatt

off topic, but did Maxtor buy Quantum a few years back? i heard a rumour like this but never confirmed it...

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It's not schisophrenia... it's just a voice in my head...

OldBuzzard

Yes, Maxtor bought Quantum, and not all that long ago, Seagate bought Maxtor.

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When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

mike2h

the only reason to go from 5 year to 3 year is to cut costs. wich menas the yhave enough failing in that time frame to actually save enough money to offset the neg press.
i to am not a big seagate fan, no particular reason, was mostly maxtor back whne now pretty much exclusive wd. mostly cause of raptor series & the 1 time i had to use warranty they were really good about it.
as far as ide goes, it needs to go away. that is a smart move on their part. not like their isnt a shit load of ide drives around.

& ty for heads up tip!!

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