[Tfug] Western Digital "red" drives?

[Bexley Hall]

Hi Zack, Kramer,

On 4/1/2013 6:40 AM, Zack Williams wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 9:16 PM, Kramer Lee<krameremark1 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> It might be that hard drive manufacturers are feeling decrease in
>> their business with tablets using memory/solid state drives, so they
>> are going through a rethinking stage.
>
>> It's probably just industry consolidation - we only have 3 companies out of
>> 200 that used to make hard disks:

Reducing warranty periods could also be the only practical way of
controlling "unmerited losses".  Consider, nowadays, it's Joe
Consumer who opts to return a drive as "defective" -- not an
FAE who makes a legitimate diagnosis of a drive failure at a
customer's site.  I've seen *outrageous* "NDF" figures reported
by manufacturers for drives -- once they are able to get the
"failed" drive on the bench and *truly* determine it's operational
capabilities.

Consider that the remedy that the user *expects* is "a new drive".
And, with drive models having ever shorter market lifetimes, the
manufacturer effectively *upgrades* a user's disk to one that is
50% larger as the original model is no longer being manufactured.

Cut down the window in which a user can *request* a replacement
and you cut down the cost of replacing (EATING!) those "NDF" devices!

I tend to figure a 3% cost for warranty support in a product's
selling price.  But, that's *genuine* failures not "imagined"
failures!