[Tfug] Western Digital "red" drives?

[Timothy D. Lenz]

Quality on nearly everything has gone down. Stuff that used to outlast 
it's usefulness, now barely makes it to the next "updated" version, let 
alone the end of the warranty.

On 4/1/2013 11:07 AM, Bexley Hall wrote:
> 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!
>
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