Fujitsu, other HDD makers get thoroughly good kicking

I read with interest all the comments on your website regarding Fujitsu Hard Drives.

As a reseller, we have sold several hundred, if not thousand Fujitsu Hard Drives, and are dealing with irrate customers on a daily basis. We have one customer who purchased 20 systems from us and has had 13 hard drive failures. Discussing these problems with Fujitsu is like talking to a brick wall!

They just deny the problems exist. The failure figures you quote of between 30-40% are well underestimated and should be nearer to 70%. We are even receiving e-mails & phone calls from customers who read the INQUIRER on a regular basis who have Fujitsu hard drives that have not yet failed but are certain that they are going to.

Fujitsu needs to stop ignoring the issue and accept that a massive failure rate of its hard drive products exist. It also needs to accept that European law entitles consumers to a two year warranty on all electrical goods and that they have an obligation to replace faulty products.

Name, company, email address supplied

Letter
We are from Barbados, a small island in the West Indies. And I can follow up on this Fujitsu drive article.

We've purchased over 150 of these drives for our clones last year and 8-12 months later, they're dying one by one! It's crazy, worst experience ever. And we're having hell with RMA. Not only that since we are so far out it's out of the question even shipping and going through the hassle of dealing with Fujitsu directly.

Regards,
Kailash Pardasani
CEO- Promotech Inc
Email address supplied

Letter
Hi Mageek,

Recovered from the out of Focus group meeting????

If MTBF on HD failures is 1,200,000,000 hours or .8% of H's sold as WD claims, then there is no reason to limit warranties to one year. If either of the claimed MTBF is even remotely close, the number of HD's sold per year would only need to be increased by perhaps one cent per drive to cover a three year warranty and one and a half cents per drive for a five year warranty. Who's B.S.ing who????

This is just another ploy to sell low quality products to consumers at significant profit with no recourse by consumers. This "disposable goods" model is permeating the PC industry as PC sales reach a mature sales level.( We no longer purchase HP products as a result of this mentality). If this model continues it will be the death of even more companies who believe in short-term profits instead of long-term customer relations. Dell has realized their low cost model no longer works but others who are desperate to keep the lights on in a down economy have not realized they must adjust to the realities of the marketplace. Lowering warranty periods just places you on a consumers "black list". If these companies think sales are bad now, wait a few months and watch sales drop like a rock. Sure OEM's will be forced to buy disposable crap for awhile until consumers will no longer buy the complete "box", but eventually these companies are just putting themselves out of Biz. HP is doing a pretty good job of going out-of-Biz right now...

Randy Hubbard
Race-Tech Engineering, Inc.
Email address supplied

Letter
It's not acceptable. If Western Digital drives are so good, then why do they need to reduce the warranty period to save money? To turn it on its head, if the drives are so good, why can't it offer an extended warranty for free?

The only people losing out on this are the consumers. Let's hope Samsung pull their finger out and start to make good performance drives so we can take advantage of their three year warranty. In the interim, there is no where else to take our business as the HDD cartel all realised they could screw the consumer if they all took the same action on 1st October.

Michael Ford
Email address supplied

Letter
Mike,

I emailed Western Digital a few days ago, and contrary to their Q&A posted on your site, they said that there was one price - $19.95 - to extend the warranty to 3 years on any Western Digital product.

Also you can buy the extension any time during the coverage period.

Roger
Email address supplied

Letter
Mike,

A 1,000,000 mtbf with a 1-year warrantee suggests to me a QA problem where too many drives fail early and some drives last literally forever, thus bringing up the average. How can I get one of the drives that lasts forever? :-)

It would be interesting to see failure rate curves for 5 years on the new drives.

Dave F
Email address supplied