Western Digital and Seagate have lowered the warranty on some of their HDD lines, making SSDs look more attarctive to consumers. Seagate had lowered warranties of its hard disk drives from 5 years to 3 back in 2008. This trend quickly spread throughout the HDD industry. Now, the company will offer one year warranties on most Barracuda and Momentus hard disk drives, effective December 31, 2011.

Seagate will be changing its warranty policy from a 5 year to a 3 year warranty period for Nearline drives, 5 years to 1 year for certain Desktop and Notebook Bare Drives, 5 years to 3 years on Barracuda XT and Momentus XT, and from as much as 5 years to 2 years on Consumer Electronics.

The new warranty periods are as follows:

Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives: 3 years
Barracuda and Barracuda Green 3.5-inch drives: 1 year
Barracuda XT: 3 years
Momentus 2.5-inch (5400 and 7200rpm): 1 year
Momentus XT: 3 years
SV35 Series - Video Surveillance: 2 years
Pipeline HD Mini, Pipeline HD: 2 years

Seagate said that the reason behind these changes is to "be more consistent with those commonly applied throughout the consumer electronics and technology industries," and "continue to focus its investments on technology innovation and unique product features that drive value for our customers rather than holding long-term reserves for warranty returns."

Western Digital is also lowering the warranty on some of its HDD lines from 3 years to 2. Affected lines include the Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue. Lines not affected are the Caviar Black, Scorpio Black, A/V drives and externals. This new warranty policy will be effective for drives shipped from January 2nd, 2012. All drives shipped to WD's distributors prior to Jan. 2nd 2012 will retain the current warranty terms.