Both of the major hard drive manufacturers have announced significant changes to the warranties of their hard drive products.
While this is not recent news it has significant impact for Data Recovery. While most PC components have become both cheaper and more reliable the opposite is true for hard drives.
The announcement at the start of 2012 has seen a significant rise in data recovery work
Western Digital – announced on January 2nd, 2012 that it’s Desktop and Mobile (Blue and Green family lines) had their warranties change from 3 years to 2 years. Black product line will remain at 5 years warranty. Enterprise products also stay at 5 years warranty.
Seagate – Effective date on December 31, 2011.
Major Desktop and Mobile products change from 2 years to 1 years and 5 years to 3 years. Most of the Enterprise class product will be reduced warranty period from 5 years to 3 years.