I <3 Seagate

[jebo_4jc]

My i7 rig has been using two oldish Maxtor 500GB drives in RAID 0 for storage, since my storage upgrade budget was semi-permanently blown when I bought a 120GB Vertex for my laptop, and continues to be bled to death by buying big storage drives for my WHS (up to 8.4TB now).

However, I was dismayed when one of the Maxtor drives began reporting an error. I made a backup image (thank you, WHS) and I am currently formatting and installing the image to a new RAID 0 array using the surviving Maxtor drive plus another oldish Seagate 500GB drive.

So, while waiting to format, I figured I would check out to see if there was some chance of warranty coverage on the drive. I figured it was way too late. I think Maxtor OEM drives were 3 year warranty, and I remembered some Maxtor drives only carried 1 year warranty during their dying days. So, I pulled the drive out and checked out the manufacture date:

15 Sep 2006

Just over 3 years ago....of course.

I figured I might as well check Seagate.com to make sure right? I remembered something about Seagate extending Maxtor warranties back in the day.

Plug in the SN, and what do you know? Seagate carries a 5 year warranty on it! I think it's really classy for a company to not only cover, but extend, the warranty on hardware they did not produce.

For $19.99, Seagate offers Advance replacement, which involves them shipping a new drive to me via 1-2 day air, and all I have to do is put the old drive in their box and they pay for return shipping. It would otherwise cost me $10-$15 just to ship it to them, so this service is a no-brainer. I'm not sure if Western Digital offers something similar, but this is a model of how an RMA should be done. Seagate's RMA website is easy to use....it's as simple as entering your address and credit card number.

I already have my order number, and I'll be interested to see what Seagate sends me to replace this aging drive.

Thank you, Seagate.

[Patriot]

wow thats pretty awesome

[Ryan]

That does seem like a really good deal for warranty