>I don't recommend Seagate OEM drives as Seagate will not handle the warranty work.
>They direct you back to the OEM dealer you bought it from.
Maybe you have a different idea of what OEM is. If the drive is rebranded as, say, Dell, I don't
think Seagate is going to warrant it. If it is an ordinary "white box" drive, I believe
Seagate warrants it, at least that is what it says in a lot of Internet store blubs.
I haven't bought many "full retail boxed" HDs and have had to return a bare drive once. It was
under 3 year warrantee from WD. No problem whatsoever.
Some big computer manufactures will buy a special spec HD to put in their computers. (They
also do this for video, sound, mobo, etc.) The deal between the computer maker and the HD
maker could be anything, and could exclude a warrantee from the HD maker, in return for a
price break. These drives are likely to have peculiar part numbers and serial numbers.
As far as I can tell Maxtor does not have any connection with Fujitsu at the present time, if
it ever did. Many years ago (like 2G HDs) Maxtor was on the brink and had a poor reputation
due to ever slipping quality. The company was turned around by large sums of money injected by
another company. It seem to me it was Fujitsu. Maxtor came out with a 5.1G drive, which was
way ahead of the IDE competitors for some time. Ever since, Maxtor has been putting out a HD
with a good rep.
The HD business is strange. Some of the important component parts are bought from
otherwise competing companies. IBM supposedly supplies the heads for all big drive manufacturers.
The platters may be contracted out to companies whose names may not be well known.
companies that may make them for other HD brands. The assembly for the mass market
is often done in Singapore, after the bugs are initially worked out in a plant elsewhere, possibly
in Amerca. The reason for this is that you cannot successfully compete unless you obtain the
highest tech parts, and somebody other than you is likely to own the patent.