Maxtor will provide warranty, not support, for drives in enclosures

Arlie Ay*censored* notes that contrary to a previous report, Maxtor will honor warranties for its hard drives that are placed in external FireWire or USB encolosures. However, the company will not provide technical support services for the drives

Apparently, the case reported to MacFixIt was based purely on the errant response of one Maxtor technical representative. Ay*censored* writes:

"The proper installation of a Maxtor drive into a non-Maxtor enclosure will not void Maxtor's limited warranty on the drive. Per Maxtor's published Limited Warranty Statement, warranty exclusions include:

• Abuse, unreasonable use, mistreatment, or neglect
• Damage caused during installation of the disk drive
• Damage caused by the equipment or system with which the drive is used
• Damage caused by modification or repair not made or authorized by Maxtor
• Disk drives whose Maxtor Serial Number and/or Material Number label have been torn or defaced
• Damage caused by use of non-Maxtor packaging
• Damage caused by improper or improperly used packaging
• Damage caused by lack of ESD protection
• Drives that are determined to be stolen

"Maxtor cannot and does not offer installation or diagnostic support services for non-Maxtor external drive enclosures, given the wide range of available configurations, interfaces and components. For Maxtor diagnostic assistance, the drive must first be removed from the external enclosure and then connected to the ATA bus on the motherboard in a PC or Macintosh."

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