Maxtor slashes warranties to one year from three

MAXTOR ANNOUNCED its DiamondMax 16 and the DiamondMax Plus 9 hard drives, designed for capacities from 60GB to 160GB. But while the new drives may be good news, there's a sting in the tail in the shape of limited warranties.

Both drives are shipping with the Ultra ATA 133 interface and will be available with Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces later in December 2002.

But Maxtor also said that from the beginning of October, warranties on all its products will fall from three years to one year. European laws might prevent Maxtor doing that here - it needs a minimum of two years, apparently.

Many readers will note that the performance gain from going to an Ultra ATA 133 from an Ultra ATA 100 interface is pretty much negligible, unless you're in a RAID situation. It's much better to hold out for Serial ATA, which promises data transfer rates up to 150 MB per second, as well as longer cables, and better ECC (Error Checking and Correction).

The DiamondMax 16 offers the highest areal density we've seen outside of research labs in 60, 80, 120, and 160 GB capacities. Maxtor's latest 7200 RPM DiamondMax Plus 9 comes with a 2 MB or optional 8 MB buffer in capacities of 60 GB, 80 GB, 120 GB and 160 GB.

There is a growing demand for performance drives as desktop users realise that their hard drives are the slowest parts in their computers, affecting performance much more than their CPUs or video cards. The move from 5400 to 7200 RPM is almost complete, and we wonder if we will soon see 10k RPM drives.

What is really disappointing is that with all this new technology, Maxtor is cutting back from the industry standard three year warranty to a one year warranty.

"Effective October 1, 2002, all Maxtor desktop drives will carry a one-year standard warranty."

That's quality for you.

Meanwhile, many performance users eagerly wait for Seagate's Barracuda V. One version to ship at the end of this month will have a 120 GB capacity, 7200 rpm speed, 8 MB buffer, and Serial ATA interface. And yes, it comes with a three year warranty. µ