Seagate Offers Five-Year Warranty To All Internally-Mounted Hard Drives

Now Seagate is improving on the old warranty with a new one that covers all internally-mounted PC, server and mobile hard drives for five years.

The new warranty came about as a result in feedback from Seagate's system builder partners, said Joe Cousins, senior director of global channel marketing for the vendor.

"From white box makers, it was clear that a one-year warranty did not meet their needs," Cousins said. "We are making a statement about our quality and reliability."

The new warranty applies retroactively to all drives shipped to distributors since June 1 in order to make as clear a transition from the previous warranty as possible, said Cousins. White box builders can check with their distributors on the specific warranty for Seagate drives purchased recently, he said. "We looked at weeks-on-hand in the channel to pick the date of the new coverage to make sure there is no lingering inventory," he said.

Cousins would not discuss the defect rate of Seagate hard drives, other than to say that typically there is no defect on about 40 percent of the drives returned to the vendor. As a result, he said, Seagate provides its channel partners with SeaTools, a software utility to help determine if there are actually problems before the drive is shipped back to Seagate. "It helps cut costly returns," Cousins said.