Never by retail hard drive kits!
For those of you who are thinking of rushing down to your local computer super store and buy that nice hard drive with the rebate incentives, DON'T.
I was just about to do this since the super store in my neighborhood had a 250 GB SATA drive in a retail box for just about the price I could order one through the mail.
Before opening the box I was curious about the warranty, I looked and looked but no mention was made on the box. Lucky for me I decided not to open the box before I made a call to the Vendor's technical support.
It appears that there IS a difference in buying a Retail Kit vs an OEM bare drive, TWO years in warranty!!!
Most OEM drives come with a 3 year warranty, Retail kits only come with 1 year.
Shame on you Maxtor and Western Digital!!!
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/service/warranty/bare_drive_warranty.htm
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/service/warranty/retail_products_warranty.htm
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp
Alex