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it means that they're willing to stand behind their product. And, even if it does fail, you can get a new one.

Not necessarily. I think seagate finally looked at the statistics and realized what they could do to stand out. The majority of drives die immediatly or not for many many years. Some die at all ages, but they're the exception. The kicker is that replacing the top of the line drive 3 years ago costs next to nothing today. The waranty won't get your data back, and it's not going to prevent your drive from dieing.

So, buy the longer waranty if it's the same price, but it's really not that great of a deal to have a 1/100 chance of getting a three year old hard drive sometime in the future.

Matthew