Seagate warranty

Ozymandias · 8 Jun 2007 at 09:01

Can anyone confirm that the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB ST3500630AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM as on OcUK shows as having the 5 year Seagate warranty on the Seagate site.

I've just received a drive from a competitor and it's a system builders OEM version i.e. no warranty at all from Seagate

It's going back, I'm looking for a replacement and want to confirm that the new drive will be covered by Seagate directly.

Jumping · 8 Jun 2007 at 10:27

AFAIK Seagate gives 5 years warranty on all drives now. However if its an OEM drive they might say that its down to the OEM partner to deal with warranty claims on your drive.

But if my memory service me right, I scavanged a drive from work that came in an IBM system, and when it failed I managed to get Seagate to replace it for me. Maybe I was just lucky but its not every day you get a free new hard drive

What you could do is check the warranty status of the drive as soon as you receive it and if its not showing up as 5 years warranty send it back to the store where you bought.

Ozymandias · 8 Jun 2007 at 10:45

Jumping said:
AFAIK Seagate gives 5 years warranty on all drives now. However if its an OEM drive they might say that its down to the OEM partner to deal with warranty claims on your drive.

What you could do is check the warranty status of the drive as soon as you receive it and if its not showing up as 5 years warranty send it back to the store where you bought.

Yes they do offer 5 years and the vendors site said 5 years manufacturers warranty. Entering the serial number on the Seagate site of the two drives I received gave :

"The product you identified was sold as a system component. Please contact your place of purchase for service. Seagate sells many drives to direct OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) customers. These products are usually configured for the OEMs only, as components for their systems. You must contact your place of purchase for any warranty support on these drives."

All the drives in the current batch from this vendor seem this way.

I'm unclear if this is a new Seagate OEM policy or just this particular vendor that have these type of drives.

stoofa · 8 Jun 2007 at 10:47

OEM & System Builders are different.
You try, for example, as an end user returning a Seagate drive that was originally sold to Dell.
They simply won't deal with you at all - this can be annoying when you know full well it was probably originally covered by say a 3 year warranty but Dell only sold it with a standard 12 month one.

Ozymandias · 8 Jun 2007 at 11:13

The issue seesm to be vendors not clearly identifying OEM & System Builder drives.

Are OcUK Seagate 500GB OEM or System Builder warranty drives ?

IAmATeaf · 8 Jun 2007 at 18:17

This isn't a new policy and other drive manufacturers have the same in place. The other problem as already pointed out is that OEM drives aren't covered by Seagate themselves and you'll have to through the supplier who will normally only offer a 1 year warranty.

Ozymandias · 8 Jun 2007 at 18:31

IAmATeaf said:
This isn't a new policy and other drive manufacturers have the same in place. The other problem as already pointed out is that OEM drives aren't covered by Seagate themselves and you'll have to through the supplier who will normally only offer a 1 year warranty.

Every drive I have purchased has been sold as an "OEM" drive and all of them have been covered by the drive manufacturer for 3 / 5 years etc.

If you pull a drive out of a Dell machine then Seagate etc. will not cover the warranty it's down to Dell. Some of these drives (designated for the likes of Dell etc.) can end up in the retail channel and get sold as "OEM" drives. They will not be covered by the manufacturers warranty.

It's not the policy that's the issue it's clearly identifying what is being sold.

smids · 10 Jun 2007 at 17:56

There is some confusion here. Let me clarify it all

.

OEM drives are drives sold to computer manufacturers such as Dell, IBM etc.

These are covered by a warranty only with the OEM builder e.g. Dell, IBM etc.

The drives that OcUK sell are probably better termed 'Bare' drives. These are effectively OEM, but it's better to call them bare drives. These are covered by Seagate's warranty as they are designed to be sold to system builders other than Dell, IBM etc. In this instance, it allows the system builder to return to Seagate for warranty.

The 'proper' OEM drives to Dell, IBM are actually covered by a warranty with Seagate, but the only people that can return these drives are the manufacturers through their partner logins.

OcUK sell 'bare' drives so will be fine. TBH, the company that sold you the other drive should not have that drive. They should have the normal 5 year warranty drive or else they are not selling new.

Ozymandias · 10 Jun 2007 at 20:17

smids said:
TBH, the company that sold you the other drive should not have that drive. They should have the normal 5 year warranty drive or else they are not selling new.

I fully agree with you. This seems to only have happened with the latest batch - but they have sold hundreds already. They are saying thay they will honour the warranty themselves if Seagate won't but I rather deal with Seagate.

Thanks for the clarification.