[ale] OT - Hard Drive Warranties

[Ron Frazier]

On 1/25/2012 1:34 PM, mike at trausch.us wrote:
> On 01/24/2012 02:05 PM, Wolf Halton wrote:
>    
>> Thus a extra paid 5-year warranty makes no financial sense to me.
>> After 5 years drives are more than likely to fail because their bearings
>> go bad.  This is why there aren't any out of the box 10-year warranties.
>> I have the same feeling about new cars.
>>
>> Call me crazy,
>> Wolf
>>      
> You're not crazy; 99% of the time, extended warranties are rip-offs.
> They only reason that they are offered is because the companies know this.
>
> I just built a server system last week.  I was offered a $70 extended
> warranty for each of 4 components, the motherboard, the CPU, the HDD and
> the RAM.  This "extended warranty" was really a "no questions asked
> replacement policy" through Fry's and nothing to do with manufacturer
> warranty whatsoever.  I declined, several times.  Why?  Because having
> built many systems, I know that hardware that is destined to fail is
> extremely likely to fail in the first several hours of operation.
>
> On this system, I had run into just that: bad RAM, right out of the box.
>   Not a terribly big deal to me, just swapped it out.  Glad I didn't buy
> the "extended warranty" -- in fact, I rarely ever do.  I only buy an
> extended warranty if the main warranty doesn't seem to be enough ---
> sometimes, a device such as a TV that has a 1 year warranty, I will buy
> a 1 year extension.  Most of the time, though, the answer is a swift "no".
>
> But I took advantage of their price matching guarantee while I was there
> (though note that they do not know how to do the math; their policy
> states that for anything you find a lower price on within 30 days of
> purchase, they'll "happily" refund 110% of the difference.  Where I grew
> up, 110% of $5 is $5.50, for example.  Here in GA, it seems to be $5.25.
>
> In fact, the CSR consistently gave me 105% the difference back, except
> (of course!) on the one item that I actually checked, where he did 110%.
>
> Ugh.
>
> As I was typing this, it appears I have a failing drive right here in my
> desktop computer.  Yay, GNOME, for telling me!  Seems I'll be going back
> there.  I wasn't going to go back for 5% of small dollars, but since I
> have to go back there anyway...
>
> (re-sending this, b/c the original one was too big...)
>
> 	--- Mike

Wow, Mike.  The drive knew you were discussing its cousins and decided 
to fail.  You never want to see that message popping up.  I didn't know 
it would do that spontaneously.  Better to know than not to know 
though.  Back it up quick.

I do sometimes buy extended warranties, if the item has mechanical parts 
or is under stress and is more likely to fail, or if (as you said) the 
included warranty seems too lame, or if I just don't want to take the 
risk and hassle of replacing / repairing the item if it breaks 
prematurely.  For example, I just bought an extended warranty on a 
dehumidifier since it is under lots stress and the manufacturing 
standards have reduced substantially over the years.  I've had a couple 
of laptops fail with broken lid hinges.  Now they're relegated to 
desktop duty.  So, I bought an extended warranty on the laptop I bought 
to replace the one that failed.  The more expensive something is, and if 
it's under mechanical stress primarily, the more likely I am to consider 
an extended warranty, because there's greater hassle to replace or 
repair it.  Of course, I know that, statistically, the warranty company 
(insurance company) will make money on all those fees they collect.  I, 
like you, would not generally buy extended warranties on computer 
components.  I just have to make sure I test them within their 14 or 15 
day return policy.  One advantage of buying from a brick and mortar 
place like Fry's is that you can do returns much easier than mail order.

Just a piece of trivia, you might want to wipe your new drive with with 
random numbers a few times just to get the controller and firmware 
intimately acquainted with each sector.  That's what I do to mine.  The 
manufacturers never have time to do exhaustive burn in testing on each 
piece.

Sincerely,

Ron

-- 

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Ron Frazier

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