Hard drive warranties

[Mike Dresser <mdresser_l@windsormachine.com>]

With Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital all cutting their warranties
on most of their IDE drives to one year, what is your opinion on what's
going on?

1)  Did Maxtor lose faith in their drives, and the others see a financial
windfall playing follow the leader?

2)  Did the three of them collude to drop warranties?

3)  Who will be next?

4)  What will the OEM's do when they warranty a system for 3 years and the
hard drive is only warrantied for a year?

5)  What will the brown boxers(small shops) do?  I doubt there's enough
profit margin nowadays to cover replacing a hard drive after a year.

6)  Does WD make you sign an NDA or something just to find out extended
warranty prices? :)  I noticed they make you send email to them for info
on pricing.

Mike Dresser