For those that have not seen, The Register is reporting that Western Digital is cutting warranties on its Caviar (desktop 3.5″) and Scorpio (notebook 2.5″) Green and Blue drives from the industry standard (on consumer drives) 3 years to 2 years.
This is a major consideration for those looking to use Western Digital in their storage servers. The Caviar Black, Scorpio Black, AV drives, and enterprise drives are not affected by this term change. Still it does increase the risk of spending quite a bit more in the future to replace drives in year three of operation.
As STH noted earlier, Western Digital is perhaps one of the hardest hit manufacturers from the Thailand flooding. It is likely that Seagate and other manufacturers are weighing whether to match Western Digital’s move to cut costs or if they will instead keep a three year warranty to be more competitive than their arch-rival. One can be assured though, Seagate is certainly debating a similar move and going over the math very carefully right now.
