Thanks to TR reader Euan Robertson for pointing out that Seagate is upping the warranty period for all its internal hard drives to five years. Seagate’s move bucks an industry trend towards reducing hard drive warranty periods. One can still find drives with three-year warranties, but most consumer drives are only covered for a year. Five-year warranties have traditionally been reserved for high-end SCSI drives.
Seagate’s extended warranty was designed to apply to drives shipped after June 1, but the company will apparently honor the new warranty for some older drives. The five-year warranty won’t apply to external hard drives, though. Seagate’s external disks will continue to be covered by a one-year warranty.
Update – Seagate’s press release announcing the five-year warranty clarifies a couple of points. First, the five-year warranty applies to all internal hard drives currently shipping in distribution and retail channels. The new warranty also applies retroactively to all drives shipped after June 1 of this year.
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