Heheh, the wacko troll has stepped up a tree on the psychopathic ladder.
Now he is Super Wacko.

"Bill Todd" wrote in message ...

"Ron Reaugh" wrote in message ...
Has anyone ever heard anyone claim that the length of a HD's warranty was
simply a marketing and price point decision by the mfg and the warranty
length has nothing to do with expected drive life?

Somewhere I think I remember someone making such a claim

And now you know who that someone was.
When it looks like a trap and sounds like a trap and smells like a trap,
THEN IT USUALLY IS A TRAP.

and a bunch of trolls tried unsuccessfully to shoot him down?

And now you are part of that select group.


Well, AFAIK nothing physical changed in ATA drives when manufacturers a
while ago decided to drop the warranty period from 3 years to 1. And I just
read that Seagate is now going to *raise* that period to *5* years as an
inducement to prospective buyers (something I'd certainly take into
consideration: I deliberately chose a 3-year-warrantied drive last time I
bought one).

Even if manufacturers over time might be able to cut corners such that a
drive would often fail in its second year without too much risk of
first-year failures, it seems unlikely that the cost savings could make up
for the resulting bad publicity. So I'd guess that drives should be in the
bottom of their 'bathtub' curve for several years regardless of what the
nominal warranty period is: unless they fail (even during that nominal
period) at a fairly significant rate the savings that the manufacturer can
realize by shortening it would seem unlikely to be large (though in such a
cut-throat pricing environment the resulting price difference might
noticeably affect sales, so if one does it, the rest may have to follow, and
the same may be true for lengthening the period as Seagate is doing, since
it would otherwise give them a unique selling point for very little price
difference).

Whether similar considerations apply to the terms of service (e.g., duty
cycle) specified for the drive is less clear: there may be fairly
noticeable savings in manufacturing a drive for light-desktop rather than
server-style use, even leaving aside more obscure characteristics such as
resistance to the need for re-seeking in environments subject to vibration.

- bill