You better overnight Santa an addendum to your Christmas list. You’re going to want to acquire as many hard drives as possible before 2012 rolls around. Both Seagate and Western Digital are slashing hard drive warrants for hard drives shipped next year. Tell Santa, tell your mother-in-law, tell you boss. All you want for Christmas this year are hard drives.
Currently the Seagate Barracuda XT, Constellation 2, ES.2 and Momentus XT hard drives ship with a stellar 5 year warranty. However, come 2012, the warranty drops to just three years. Seagate’s other lines are also seeing warranty cuts. The SV35 Series and Pipeline HD drives will soon have a two-year promise while the Barracuda, barracuda Green and 2.5-inch Momentus will ship with only 12 months of coverage.
Western Digital is also cutting hard drive warranties. The Scorpio Blue, Caviar Blue and Green will soon only have a two year warranty rather than the current three-year note. However, the company is letting buyers extend the warranties if they don’t mind coughing up a bit more cake.
These changes come after a period of amazing hard drive deals abruptly interrupted by mother nature. Widespread flooding in Thailand forced many consumer electronic companies to close factories, which in turn, caused prices to spike. Once upon a time 2TB hard drives could be had for less than $70. Now, as 2011 is coming to a close, 2TB drives are priced around $100 and steadily increasing. Hard drive manufacturers are no doubt looking at ways to keep prices competitive. Slashes warrants no doubt helps with short-term loses by increasing the profit margin. As always, back up your data. Hard drives do not last forever.