For those that have built PCs long enough, you probably remember a time when several hard drive manufacturers routinely offered 7-year warranties. Western Digital was one of them. They proudly stated that their HDDs would last that span of time easily.

Then at one point, most of the 7-year warranties on HDDs vanished. What happened?

What happened is that some of the metal components in HDDs were replaced with plastic. And there was no way the plastic components could last as long as the metal ones did. Thus ushered in the era of short-short warranty periods for a super-serious component of your computer, the hard disk drive.

The reasonable life expectancy of a traditional 3.5-inch 7200 RPM hard drive built for consumer use – assuming it’s a quality brand – is five to seven years.

Concerning warranties, hard drive manufacturers are offering a 1-year warranty on the low end (which is pathetic) and 7 years on the high end. The average is 3 to 5.

What type of HDD offers a 7-year warranty?

RAID class HDDs have them because more or less because they have to. It would be ridiculous to use a HDD in a RAID setup that wasn’t built for rugged use.

Which company offers the most 5-year warranties?

Western Digital, followed by Seagate. WD has more selection, but if you’re a diehard Seagate-’til-I-die type, they have their share of drives with 5-year warranties on them.

Does warranty truly matter if all the HDDs have roughly the same life expectancy?

Actually it does. The HDDs with the 5-to-7 year warranties indicates the company who made it is committed to keeping them in stock and supporting them for an extended period of time. Ones with 1-to-3 year warranties on them will have a very short shelf life, support will be very limited and you might even run into a driver issue should you decide to switch operating systems in the future.

Driver issues? With a hard drive?

Yes, it can happen. It’s rare when it does, but is not out of the realm of possibility.

Microsoft has said they intend on releasing a brand new version of Windows every three years, starting with Windows 7. We’ll fast-forward the clock three years from now to 2012, and assume you have the same PC you did three years ago with the same components. If you have one of those one-year warranty drives in your system, there is the possibility it may not be supported in the new version of Windows due to the fact it had such a short shelf life.

The likelihood of this occurring is slim because Microsoft supports so many different types of hard drives and is the ultimate in backwards compatibility – but the point is that it’s not impossible. If on the other hand you have a drive with a 3, 5, or 7-year warranty on it, the new Windows OS will support it because it’s still in wide use at the time of the new OS release.

Should you worry about this now with your existing PC?

No, that’s not necessary. It’s something you have to take into consideration when building a new PC or when replacing your existing hard drive. You want to use major components that will last you a bare minimum of three years. For things like case fans you don’t have to worry about warranty. But for hard drives, yes, it matters if you intend on using it longer than a year.

My recommendation is to stick to the HDDs that at least have a 5-year warranty on them. You’ll probably never have to use the warranty, and that’s fine. The point to purchasing it is more for future OS support than warranty service.

What about 2.5-inch laptop hard drives?

The smaller 2.5-inch HDDs are also available with 5-year warranties on them, however bear in mind most people don’t use laptops for more than 3 years.

Given the fact the laptops are ultra-proprietary by nature, the OS support will be there. That being the case, a 3-year HDD warranty is fine on laptop computers.

If on the other have you have a custom build desktop PC using a 2.5-inch drive, go for the 5-year instead.

What about Solid State Disk?

SSD at this point is still far too expensive and for proper OS support it’s mandatory to use Windows Vista, Win 7 or a Linux distribution that you have absolute confirmation has proper SSD support, otherwise it simply won’t work.

It is a truth that at some point in the future SSD will replace HDD. I have no doubt of this whatsoever. But it won’t be any time soon.

Consider the fact that a 30GB SSD costs $125 while a 1000GB (1TB) HDD costs $85. It’s like I said, way too expensive to even consider at this point.

Stick to 7200 RPM 3.5-inch HDDs with 5-year warranties and you’re good to go.

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