Reliable Hard Drives a thing of the past?

I am on the market for a new external hard drive. The Western Digital 500G one I have had a 2 year warranty and lasted 4 years before it just would not connect any more. The 5 year warranty one lasted 7 years, so I am happy about that.

Typically I have been buying 5 and 10 year warranty hard drives but they seem to not be available any more. My first one was a Seagate 40 Meg. Still runs, BTW.

According to a recent article here, two big-time manufacturers slashed the warranties on hard drives. The manufacturers give some bogus-to-me reasons about why they did it, but the bottom line is as follows -- in my opinion: They cannot be sure of the quality of the products they manufacture any more. Yippee for the global-supply-disjointed-chain!

So, let us all put our faith in these disposable external hard drives with 30-day, 90-day, or even [gulp] 1-year and [double-gulp] 2-year warranties. Let us backup our cherished phone and video memories on metallic storage devices that the manufacturers themselves do not think can last for more than a year, or two. Could they be thinking that nobody will notice that hard drive warranties are reduced?

But wait, the manufacturers "may" charge us for "extended" warranties. I can see why they "may". I wonder how they can charge for extended warranties when they slap 1-year warranties on products they do not think will last more than 1 year.

Quality manufacturing seems to be dead, anywhere I look around me. Is it for the sake profits versus customer satisfaction? [Ah, the people will buy anything you drop the price on - so said a Marshals' employee the other day when I asked "how long does merchandise last on the shelves?"]. Even Nokia is going cheapo -- the 7 key on my E1 phone just fell off -- it must have hit the warranty-period-end mark.

Anyway, long live recycled disposable paper plates, since that is where we seem to be right now in manufacturing quality products.

PS. What drive will I buy? Probably a LACIE since they offer 3 year warranties. Bye-bye Seagate and WD. See you when you start making quality products that you can stand behind.