Ideal ups hard-drive warranties

Reinstates three-year warranties on all entry-level hard drives

Ideal is set to stir things up in the hard-drive market following its move to reinstate full, three-year warranties on all of its entry-level hard drives.

The decision comes just eight months after key hard-drive manufacturers caused an uproar by slashing the warranties on entry-level products from the traditional three years to one.

Maxtor was the first to make the change last year, then Seagate and Western Digital followed suit with similar warranty reductions.

Ideal will triple the length of warranties back to three years on entry-level drives from all of its suppliers, including Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate and Hitachi GST.

The pan-European offer, which covers drives purchased from Ideal's parent firm, Bell Microproducts, comes into effect immediately and will backdate to 26 May.

"It's a bold move, but we've looked at the mean failure rates of drives and we think it's viable," said Seamus Twohig, director of product marketing at Bell Microproducts.

"The manufacturers changed their warranty proposition in October last year and there has been push-back from customers ever since, particularly in countries such as Sweden and Germany. We will not charge any more for this service."

Ideal is hoping to attract more system builders but is also backing up its move into vertical markets such as CCTV and industrial automation, where it claimed hard-drive use is starting to boom.

Twohig added: "One system builder has switched over to us because it offers systems with three-year guarantees, so having three-year warranties on the drives was important."

Terry Fisher, pre-sales and product manager at Compusys, said: "The move is good for the smaller system builder, and it gives firms like us ammunition when dealing with hard-drive vendors.

"It makes sense because three-year warranties are standard on most PC systems, and of all the PC components, the hard drive is the most likely to fail."