If you’ve ever tried to open the chassis of your hard drive, you will most likely notice warranty stickers over the screw holes. Peel them off and you get that horrible ‘warranty void’ notice. It can often seem like salt is being rubbed into the wounds - not only has your hard drive failed, often a manufacturing defect, but when you try to repair it they won’t even honour the warranty.

Well if you are using data recovery services, all the manufacturers will honour the warranty, providing you have evidence. To retain the warranty status, always ask your data recovery specialist to provide written verification of their services, or at the very least retain the invoice. In all other case where the manufacturer can attribute misuse, tampering or alteration, they are unlikely to offer you a replacement.

Be well aware though. The warranty only covers the cost of a replacement hard drive, not the cost of the data recovery. Any agreement between you and the data recovery expert, is limited to those parties and the manufacturer makes no warranty regarding the services provided.

So how long is my warranty? Well that depends on what drive you have and how it failed. If you can prove a manufacturing defect, it is possible to press for a replacement years after the purchase. That is really difficult to do though. Generally you will have to return the hard drive and the manufacturer will conduct a visual mechanical inspection. Hard drives all have different warranty periods and if you visit the manufacturer’s website, search for ‘warranty validation’ and enter your serial number, the warranty will be displayed.

Traditionally warranties lasted for five years but these were slashed a little while ago to as little as one year. Seagate and Western Digital imposed these new warranty periods back in 2011, but some external hard drive manufacturers such as Verbatim are offering seven year warranties on some products. So before buying a new hard drive, think about the warranty offered.