Western Digital stretches out warranty life on hard drives

By Dahna McConnachie

August 5, 2005 12:00 PM ET

(AUSTRALIAN RESELLER NEWS) SYDNEY -- Western Digital Corp. has increased the warranty period of some of its hard drives by standardizing all enterprise drives to five years and desktop and notebook drives to three years.
Previously, some of these warranties were valid for only one year.
All drives sold through WD's authorized distributors, such as Achieva Technology, Esys, Ingram Micro, Synnex and Westan, and manufactured or purchased after June 1, are affected by the new policy.
WD CEO Arif Shakeel said the move was to align the warranty period with customers' other systems.
"Many of our customers offer three-year warranties on their desktop and notebook systems and five-year warranties on their servers," he said. "WD's new warranty policy aligns with the industry standards and meets or exceeds customer expectations."
The decision was spurred by a recent survey of thousands of WD customers that found that hard drive buyers overwhelmingly rate reliability as the most important feature in a drive, Shakeel said. Warranty, performance and capacity were also high on customers' lists of priorities. WD desktop and notebook hard drives, including WD Scorpio, WD Caviar, WD Caviar SE and WD Caviar SE16 drive families, are now all covered by WD's three-year warranty.
The company's enterprise drives, including WD Raptor and WD Caviar RE, are now supported with its five-year warranty.
WD spokesman Steve Shattuck, said he did not expect the changes to the warranties to have any immediate effect on sales.
Daniel Feldman, Synnex marketing manager, said the move was a good one for the channel and for the distributor specifically.
"This is primarily a strategy to combat Seagate's five-year warranty and increase market share," he said. "It is also mainly targeting the systems integrator market, which is an important part of what we do."
More information about WD's warranty policy is available on the company's Web site.

Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Additional Resources

Xerox

Win a color printer!

By using solid ink technology only from Xerox, you could save up to 65% by printing color for the cost of black and white. Enter for a chance to WIN a PhaserTM 8860 network color printer!

Microsoft

Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 today.

Save time and mitigate security risk. Deploy it now.

Sybase

NEXT-GENERATION MOBILITY PLATFORMS

In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions.

Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.

White Papers & Webcasts

Hidden Cash: Maximizing the Value of Surplus Technology in a Down Economy
In today's tightened economy, all major technology purchases are being carefully scrutinized to ensure that each new piece of hardware and software can...

Usability Is Everything
Learn what sets Workday's HR and Payroll solutions apart from the competition....

Your Network at Half the Price: Slash Network Hardware Costs With Pre-Owned Equipment
Pre-owned networking equipment is certainly less expensive than the new variety, but IT managers are often challenged to know when and how to...

The Value of Real SaaS at Workday
Cost savings, speed to value, and innovation brought to the enterprise by Workday's software-as-a-service solutions for HR and Payroll....

Impact of the Dramatic Increase in Devices on the Cost to Support
This white paper describes the challenges that CIOs will face in coming years due to a dramatic increase in the number of devices...

SaaS at Flextronics, Inc.
Dave Smoley, CIO of Flextronics, discusses the real value of software-as-a-service and why he chose Workday for his HR solution....

Help Customers Preserve and Share Memories
As digital cameras became more and more prevalent, many photofinishers bemoaned the demise of their traditional film and processing business model. Digital posed...

Why Compliance Pays
This OnDemand webcast explores the relationship that firms with best compliance records have higher revenue, greater customer retention, lower financial losses from data...

For Best Results, Think Beyond the Box
Technology is complex. Keeping it running productively shouldn't be. To that end, you want to minimize the number of solutions needed in-house to...

Agile Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for Rapid ROI
Find out how combining ECM and BPM will help adress issues about content rich business processes....

All White Papers | All Webcasts