Another example of hard drive companies destroying themselves.
According to The Register, Western Digital has just cut the warranty period on their Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue drives from 3 years to 2 years effective January 2, 2012. Caviar Black and Scorpio Black will remain unaffected.
According to a letter to WD channel partners (SelectWD letter),
“This new warranty policy will be effective for drives shipped from January 2nd, 2012. It is important that you take a moment to update your website(s) and collateral to reflect this change for effected drives shipped after January 1st, 2012.
All drives shipped to distributors prior to Jan. 2nd 2012 will retain the current warranty terms. Because of existing inventory in the distribution channel there will be a short period of time when some drives with a 3-year warranty will be sold at the same time as drives with a 2-year warranty.
If you have any doubt about the warranty of a drive you purchased, you can go to support.wdc.com, select Warranty and RMA Services and proceed to the Warranty Check page.”
Of course, this begs the question. What does this mean? Is Western Digital experiencing higher than average defect rates on these drives? Is this because of the flooding in Thailand?
To memory companies producing SSDs: Here’s your chance. Make those price cuts and crush the competition.
Thoughts? Comment below.
Source: The Register
