It seems like the cheap hard drive prices of the good old days is going to be delegated to the history books. :(

HDD Pricewatch: Higher prices are the new normal | ExtremeTech (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/129874-hdd-pricewatch-higher-prices-are-the-new-normal)

But I was surprised to read "Seagate recently announced its intended purchase of rival LaCie."
I thought LaCie just used the cheapest brand HD they could get from any of the HD manufacturers and didn't manufacture any drives themselves.

Rival in the sense that both companies retail external hard drive products.
LaCie of course does not manufacture hard disk mechanisms.

supply is still not back to where it was last summer. form what I've seen some sizes, some models inexplicably go "absent" for sometimes weeks at a time.

I'd suggest that any supply problems can certainly be expected considering all the massive stuff that Nature threw at those areas that do the manufacturing, and I'm actually amazed as to how well and fast they have actually somewhat recovered.

Just cleaning up the silt and dust from the floods alone must have been a monumental task as a minimum.

I'm always amazed by their output after watching a factory tour video a year or so ago of just ONE Samsung factory that was producing some million plus 2.5" a week!! And that was just from one of their factories.

WD, Hatachi and others were probably doing the same. And now it's "catch up" time for them.

Just boggles my mind, and yes, that's easy to do. ;)

Supply problems are now a result of the field being reduced to two suppliers and the dropping of many models as a result.

Warranties suck - even OWC who buys drives in the thousands is scrambling.

There was a blowout of Hitachi that were well priced but that's gone and now it's down to 1 year warranty or Enterprise.

Working with OWC on longer warranties for our main drives that are beyond manufacturers which will require reserves and burn in procedures.
Gonna be a mess for a bit as the dust settles but prices are certainly down from their peak where a 3 TB Hitachi was over $400.

Now Toshiba is taking over the Hitachi product line so we may see a much needed third player

But right now it's Seagate and WD both with sucky warranties. :(

MacDoc, have Seagate & WD actually reduced their warranty period, or are the warranties just difficult to invoke?

I'm sure there was a pretty good summary of the various hard drive warranty changes posted here recently.

Maybe try a search.

WD still offers 2 year warranties on Green drives, and 5 years on Black drives.

Greens used to be 3 years (I think), but Blacks haven't changed.

WD's warranty is absurdly easy to use. Fill out the form, wait 2 days for the new drive, and ship the old one back in the replacement's packaging.

Not a matter of "still" on Green- they were reduced from 3 to 2 and you pay for that 5 year warranty on the Black.

Seagate and Western Digital announce reduced warranties for hard drives
By Shawn Knight
On December 19, 2011, 2:30 PM EST
Comments 16

Seagate and Western Digital have both announced that they are slashing warranty coverage on many of their consumer-grade hard drives. Seagate drives are taking the hardest hit with the company shaving as much as four years off select drives.

In a letter to an authorized Seagate distributor, the company announced that they will begin new warranty policies effective December 31, 2011. In summary, Barracuda and Barracuda Green 3.5-inch drives and Momentus 2.5-inch drives will now ship with a one year warranty. SV35, Pipeline HD Mini and Pipeline HD products will come with a two year warranty and Momentus XT, Barracuda XT and Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives will have a three year warranty.

On the Western Digital front, the company is cutting the warranty period for Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue drives from three years to two years. Caviar Black and Scorpio Black drives will retain the same five year warranties as before. WD’s new policy goes into effect for drives shipped after January 1, 2012.

Seagate and Western Digital announce reduced warranties for hard drives - TechSpot News (http://www.techspot.com/news/46726-seagate-and-western-digital-announce-reduced-warranties-for-hard-drives.html)

Generally warranty is fairly straight forward to execute ( except Samsung ) tho our clients tend to want advance replacement which we offer for a fee.
Renews the warranty and they get a fresh drive

Western Digital lists their WD Caviar Black HDDs as having a 5 year warranty, yet many on-line sites say 3 years.

WD Support / Warranty Services / End User / Worldwide Warranty Policy and Limitations (http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp)

I encountered the apparent 3 year limit when I had to replace the dead 500GB WD with a new WD Caviar Black 1TB over a year ago, and when I went to register it, that was what was showing and I had to send them a scanned dated sales slip to get it to the 5 year warranty.

Unfortunately the previous WD 500GB replacement someone had done previously on my used mid-2007 24" IMac had never been registered and was not covered.

All other dealings with WD have been almost painless with the exception of the shipping charges associated with any replacement that I had to do with a old WD MyBook "Premier" external when one of it's FW ports went kaput. And I'm glad I paid the $27.00 for its extended warranty they had available at that time.

I guess it's best to check their site and check, and register any WD drive. When done, any warranty replacement is almost painless, except for the time delay and any associated shipping costs.

And maybe other manufactures do and have a similar warranty registration policy, but I try to sick with using WD drives and some other brand's "warranty" replacements I have had to deal with over the has been a real PAIN. But not quite as painful as having a tooth root canal done without any freezing. That I could NOT deal with which reminds me of the atrocities some of our war vets had to endure, IF they even survived.

But I digress ..., but there were some recent memorial day celebrations that still remind us to reflect, as if we needed even needed to be reminded.

Sorry for my digression...

Thanks folks... for clarity on the warranty issues.

They're slowly starting to drop. WD Caviar Black 1TB used to be $150 regular and $125 when I bought it on sale a month and a bit ago? Now it's $130 regular and on sale for $100.

Generally warranty is fairly straight forward to execute ( except Samsung ) tho our clients tend to want advance replacement which we offer for a fee.
Renews the warranty and they get a fresh drive

Advanced replacements don't change the remaining warranty period, they just get you the new drive faster - unless you're giving them a retail drive and sitting on the replacement yourself, which is somewhat crazy...

We don't give it to them - clients pay- we use the replacements when they come in for upgrades in other machines.
They pay for the advance replacement and renewed warranty