Seagate settles class-action drive suit

[ObiWan]

Seagate has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit by offering customers from the past six years a cash refund or free back-up and recovery software.

The suit was filed by Michael Lazar and Sarah Cho in March 2005 following claims that the actual storage capacity of Seagate's hard drives was seven per cent less than promised.

In particular, the plaintiffs alleged that Seagate mislead consumers by using the decimal definition of 'gigabyte' in which one gigabyte equals one billion bytes.

Computer operating systems calculate hard drive capacity using the binary definition of gigabyte, in which one gigabyte equates to 1,073,741,824 bytes, creating the seven per cent discrepancy.

A hearing has been scheduled in the San Francisco Superior Court to approve the settlement.

The suit states that anyone in the US who purchased a new Seagate hard drive from an authorised Seagate retailer or distributor between 22 March 2001 and 26 September 2007 is entitled to claim on the settlement.

Source: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/22...s-class-action

[Torn]

I'm going to sue bread companies because one slice from my last loaf didn't have the full 15 grains that the cover promised!

What a bunch of losers this world has.

[AmpeD]

im going to sue michael lazar because hes not a 100% gay like promised, hes only 93% gay

[cielchocobo]

So does that mean EVERYBODY who purchased a Seagate drive can get their money back?.. Sounds nuts to me. I would be getting back money for two HDDs =/

[Broken]

How much money back per drive are they talking about?
With these class action things it's hardly ever worth the time.
I have two 500GB Seagate hard drives that I bought back in August.

[BawA]

what the heck people will do with the files stored on their HDD, its waste of time, 7% of 500Gb HDD is about 35Gb, is that worth getting in all kinda problems so you "may" get a refund in some time. you start moving data from that HDD to another one or maybe buy a new one just so you can move it although there was no problem keeping them there.
thats quite lot to loss then to earn.

[dave12]

so this is for only for us users or other can also get refunds

[mbucari1]

this is really ridiculous. EVERY hard drive that I have seen to date is the same way. Seagate isn't the only one; WD, Maxtor, Hitachi and I'm sure many others pull the same "trick".

Maybe that means I can get a few more rebates in the coming months

[danne]

Yeah, it wasn't only seagate who did this. It was actually quite a fuzz about it when the change from binary to decimal went on. Pissed me off too (not so much from the difference, but they didn't exactly announce it). So the thing was, you didn't get what you payed for.

I find it really ridiculous using decimal to represent it, since where ever you check your capacity in any OS it will be in binary form. It just confuses consumers. I have however always bought the drives that cost ~1000skr (~$160 currently). It has been the most sensible buy the last couple of years.

[Racket]

lol. Seagate should have had a counter argument that the plaintiffs were "un-educationed" in computer topics and failed to read the manuals/details.