On 11/02/2012 3:57 PM, James Harper wrote:
On the subject of warranty, the laws in australia have changed for goods purchased since 1/1/2011. The manufactures warranty just represents the point where you can get your money back easily. The product must still function for a reasonable time after purchase and must be repaired or replaced if it fails within that time, although I think that responsibility falls to the party you purchased it off. The "reasonable time" bit isn't clearly defined, but if I bought a disk and it failed within 18 months I'd be contacting the place I'd bought it off, even if it only came with a 12 month warranty. No manufacturer is going to agree that their product isn't expected to last 3 years.
From http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1023610
I believe that the laws have NOT changed, those laws were part of the Trade Practices Act quite some time ago..... the new ACCC notes / rulings makes people _think_ that the laws have changed. All of this was already covered by TPA.
It was covered, but not clearly. The rights and obligations for suppliers and consumers are now much more clearly spelled out. They even have a completely different section for resolution of faults in goods obtained before 1/1/11.
The trouble with many things is that they are made to be replaced, and far too frequently as well. Some things last, others do not.
We all know that with HDDs there are all sorts of things that can go wrong and some of those are problems due to manufacturing faults, others are to do with the environment in which they are used and HOW they are used.
If you look at the MTBF [1] figures of "standard" drives against "enterprise" drives, you will see that standard drives are manufactured to lesser standards and expecting them to last as long as enterprise drives is just a dream.
I bet no manufacturer would put in writing that "it's not reasonable to expect this drive to last 3 years of 24/7 operation", and if they don't put it in writing I think a warranty claim within that time is fair game (and if they did put it in writing, it's front page Slashdot material :) James