First Maxtor bought Quantum, and now Seagate and Maxtor are merging. All we need is less competition. I just hope "Maxgate" or whatever the new company calls themselves will at least continue to offer the five year warranty Seagate has. This one year warranty just isn't my thing. And it has gotten worse. I recently looked at a Maxtor external drive in a store, and noticed it had a ninety day warranty. That's just plain stingy.

The term "merger" gets used, but Seagate is buying out Maxtor.

Some retailers appear to have stock with different warranty terms and they use that as leverage to get you to buy extended warranty plans. Try to buy from a vendor selling drives with the standard warranty (Provantage has been OK for us when we build systems.)

The warranty time is very important. A couple of years ago we built several systems using some very spendy SCSI drives. Over time every single one of them failed. They came from a very large reputable computer company that has 3 initials in its name and recently got out of the hard drive business. Fortunately the drives had 3 year warranties, or we would have been seriously screwed.

Hard drives are warranted from the date of manufacture, not date of sale (a bit odd, but that's the way it is). One thing that's been a problem lately, is that some of the manufacturers are advertising certain lengths of warranties, but when you check your particular drive on their database, it can show up as having a much shorter warranty than the advertising you read. It's a real good idea to check your drive on the manufacturer's website, when you first get the drive, and contact them right away, if there is a discrepancy.

Another thought: buy your drives with an American Express card - they will double the original warranty (with some limitations). I believe some other credit cards may also have similar programs. Info about the Amex program is here:

https://www124.americanexpress.com/c...assurance.jsp?

Good point. The companies manage to contradict themselves in the first paragraph:

By the way, the new company will still be called Seagate:

According to Maxtor, they do have a ninety day warranty as standard on a couple of their external drives:

Source: Maxtor Retail-Packaged Products Warranty Periods

So it isn't the stores that set this period, but rather Maxtor.