PC News : Hard Drive manufacturers reducing warranty periods

Seagate and Western Digital are cutting back on hard drive warranties, in some instances from five years to one, in order to save money or redirect it to product development.


Seagate's warranties on certain drives will be reduced as of Dec. 31, and WD will follow beginning Jan. 2. All drives shipped prior to those dates will continue to carry the current warranty term associated with the products.

The warranty period reductions, first reported by The Register, mean some of Seagate's and WD's most popular drives for desktops and laptops will no longer carry three- or five-year warranties.
In an email response to Computerworld, Seagate said it was reducing warranty periods as a way to standardize its terms "to be more consistent with those commonly applied throughout the consumer electronics and technology industries.

"By aligning to current industry standards, Seagate can continue to focus its investments on technology innovation and unique product features that drive value for our customers," the company said.
In other words, Seagate is redirecting money previously spent on upholding longer warranties in order to invest in product development.

Source >> Hard drive manufacturers slash warranty periods

By short, they're cutting the warranty periods of 5 to 3 (this isn't new) and 3 to 2 years (now this is new).
Still, no matter if they change it to 1 year or 5 years warranty period, we still need to get some redundancy on the important data we hold in case shit-hits-the-fan.

*psst, my DVD-RW still serves it purpose static data storage.