Seagate & Maxtor

[casey]

I was surprised today when a vendor at the computer show started to tell another customer that Seagate bought
Maxtor. Why didn't you guys tell me?

Seagate to buy Maxtor for $2 billion

Updated Hard drive hard cheese


By INQUIRER staff: Wednesday 21 December 2005, 08:54

[dbarrow]

They did... a while back.
Why do you think there have been all those Maxtor rebates and price cuts as they clear inventory?

Maybe between the two of them, they can build decent drives again.

[mylanta]

yeah I'm sure it was posted here Larry.
I know I have made many negative remarks about how i expect just like Quantum taught Maxtor how to make a horrible drive, now Maxtor will show Seagate how to do it too!!

[photolady]

now Maxtor will show Seagate how to do it too!! God, I hope not!! Seagate's are the best next to WD. Maybe we'll get lucky and Seagate will fix Maxtor's problems. :D

[mylanta]

I sure hope it's your way!

[photolady]

I went looking for the article that was posted on my other site, but it was in Reuter's and they said the article wasn't available now. Anyway, it was announced about Jan. 1, 2006.

[Pi rules]

There's an article here (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20051221081704.html) from 12/21/05. It says that they will probably control about 44% of the hard drive market.

I know I have made many negative remarks about how i expect just like Quantum taught Maxtor how to make a horrible drive, now Maxtor will show Seagate how to do it too!!
:eek: Just go with a WD and you'll be safe. :)

[mylanta]

You know PI that is mostly what I use but i do have some Seagate as well.

[casey]

Now that I'm thinking about this, the vendor also said that Western Digital only gives one year warranties on the boxed hard drive but three years on the OEM's. This really doesn't make much sense but I haven't bought a WD in a while. (I have a WD SATA 160 that will be delivered MON.)
The one I have coming is from Fry's and I believe it will be boxed...

[mylanta]

Well you would think you can check this easily as I remember WD going to 3 years when Seagate went to 5 years recently. So I ran thorough Newegg looking at drives and it seems OEM are 1 year with WD and some are 5 year (8meg cache units I believe), Maxtor are 3 year and I seem to remember for those with courage, Hitachi (you know the repackaged IBM Deathstars) are 4 years. Samsung is in there two.
I thought that sata drives were now mostly 5 years as well.I see WD Raptors at 5 years though and also sata drives at the WD site same way.

[casey]

I don't know Rich, but the drive I just bought only has a year:

Western Digital 160GB WD1600JDRTL Serial ATA (SATA/150) 8MB - Retail Hard Drive Kit

Serial ATA Hard Drives:
For Windows
Outpost #: 3868547
Capacity: 160GB
Seek Time: 8.9ms
7200RPM
8MB Buffer
1 Year Limited Manufacturer Warranty

[mylanta]

I don't know Rich, but the drive I just bought only has a year:

Western Digital 160GB WD1600JDRTL Serial ATA (SATA/150) 8MB - Retail Hard Drive Kit

Serial ATA Hard Drives:
For Windows
Outpost #: 3868547
Capacity: 160GB
Seek Time: 8.9ms
7200RPM
8MB Buffer
1 Year Limited Manufacturer Warranty


Larry,
If you look WD is all over the place with warranties and I wonder if what you bought isn't really a bargain because it is old? Let's lease understand that what I said here is neither critical, nor looking to rekindle and past problems, it is simply a possible explanation.

[dale@fcg]

I've bought WD's with warranties anywhere from 1 to 3 yrs.

Seagate's I've bought have all been 5 yrs. Here's hoping I never have to make use of that warranty- :pray2:

[mylanta]

I've bought WD's with warranties anywhere from 1 to 3 yrs.

Seagate's I've bought have all been 5 yrs. Here's hoping I never have to make use of that warranty- :pray2:


Don't dale. After years of sending back maxtor's i finally realized they were sending me back worse ones than I sent them, so I save a ton of time with my own warranty plan. Throw them away and buy another brand!

[casey]

I was just trying to figure this out and decided if they did give three year warranties I would grab another one right away. When I saw the 1 year I decided to wait as I don't know when I'll use it. I have a few IDE drives that haven't been out of the box yet. Didn't mean to hold you to the warranty, I just wanted to let you know you can still buy
WD's with one year warranty, even if they are Sata drives.

[Dan18960]

The FIRST thing I look at is the warranty period THEN the price. I would rather pay a higher price for a longer warranty than a bargain price for a short warranty.

My thinking is that the more the warranty the more quality on that production line. And I look at 3 years or more since the Intel mbd's I use all come with 3 years. That way no matter what is in the box, I know will be in the same warranty period no matter what goes wrong that is high dollars at least.

[mylanta]

You know Dan ordinarily I agree with you but with hard drives, I don't care because this business of sending a bad one back, and having them send you back one from your neighbor that is worse gets old. So I throw them away and use that to increase the average price of the next one causing me to seek the greatest bargain next time. I am convinced that buying a hard drive is just a case of luck anyway. play the odds buy WD as fewer go back!

[Dan18960]

Rich,

I think you missed my "point". I want to have the hardware all associated with the same warranty period (or greater) so I don't have to guess when a warranty ended on any given hardware installed.

I only get the mbds that have a 3 year warranties, so if I can get the major components (of which I only consider the hard drive) to have the same coverage - I don't have to play what the ? ? ? ?

I also feel that if a company is willing to back a piece of hardware for a longer period - they are putting their money where their mouth is and to take that "gamble" they have to invest more quality in that product line.

I still have WD ide drives running from 5 - 6 years ago and my SCSI drives are turning 7 - 8 years still in the field. Of course, most of my SCSI drives have been Seagate - they really put the quality into those drives.

I don't know the life expectancy of the SATA drives yet - but I do have at least 2 years on most of mine.

[mylanta]

Makes sense Dan but I guess that is more control than I would be able to exert!
I too have really old WD drives going back about 6-7 years. What I find scary is the only bad sata drive I have had was a Seagate, and I bought a bunch of them based on Seagate SCSI experience years ago.

[kern]

I was surprised today when a vendor at the computer show started to tell another customer that Seagate bought
Maxtor. Why didn't you guys tell me?

we did. i posted the Seagate press release on KH just before we changed over to vbulletin.....

[mylanta]

Wait a minute Rob, if you did Larry would have seen it. Prove it!

[kern]

Wait a minute Rob, if you did Larry would have seen it. Prove it!

its #412 in the KH archive in the Software/Hardware Forum.

[casey]

Sorry, I must have missed it..