Fantom 1TB eSATA/USB External Hard Drive for $69.99 Shipped After Rebate

[Spoofee]

Fantom 1TB eSATA/USB External Hard Drive for $69.99 Shipped After Rebate

Buy.com has the Fantom FD G-Force 1TB eSata/USB Hard Drive for a good price.

Item has a rating of 4.5/5.0 from 342 reviews

Pricegrabber Price : $111.66 ~ $138.51 Shipped

1. Buy.com Price : $89.99
2. Rebate Price : -$20.00 ( Exp : 08/23/09 )
Final Price : $69.99 Shipped After Rebate

 

[coward]

Check reviews

Fantom Drives' products have all kinds of reliability issues. My personal experience was with a Network Attached Storage version of this product - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822204059 - NewEgg stopped selling it because the drives failed for so many people. Same reviews at Amazon, etc.

 

[StevenJ]

Not a bad deal for a drive with an eSATA interface. But why would anyone buy any hard drive with only a 1 year warranty? I buy a fair number of drives and prefer Seagate if only because their warranty is 5 years and most others are 3 years. I wonder if the drive inside this box has a longer warranty from the maker of the drive itself??

 

[spazntwitch]

Seagate reduced their warranty to 3 years now for bare drives. I got this e-mail from them December 10, 2008.

Seagate Updates Warranty Terms on Select Bare Drives

Starting in 2009, Seagate will be making some important changes to its limited warranty terms for selected bare drive products.

For products purchased on or after January 3, 2009, the limited warranty period for consumer electronics, notebook and personal storage bare drives sold to Seagate Authorized Distributors will be changed from 5 to 3 years. Seagate believes that the new warranty period and terms better reflect current industry standards.

Seagate enterprise drives and Seagate and Maxtor external retail products that have 5-year warranty periods will not be affected by this change.

When I told them the 5-year warranty was a great selling point, they responded:

We have identified the opportunity to offer our customers warranty terms that we believe are in line with industry standard warranty offerings, and that better align to the requirements of our partners and customers.

Sounded like a lot of fluff to me. I'm not sure of any customer that would prefer a 3-year warranty over a 5-year one.

 

[Mateo1041]

Great email, spazntwitch. Thanks for taking the time to post that.

 

[awakeness]

Why would anyone buy any hard drive with only a 1 year warranty? I buy a fair number of drives and prefer Seagate if only because their warranty is 5 years and most others are 3 years.

I used to think the same thing. But I've found my Seagate FreeAgent external drives are frequently failing to connect. I have to unplug them and plug them back in. It's a pain. I bought one of these Fantom drives (with I think a 2 year warranty) and it always connects. So that's why I wouldn't buy a Seagate. I talked to Seagate tech support about it and they have nothing to say. They tried some troubleshooting to no effect.