Seagate Offers Refunds on 6.2 Million Hard Drives

An anonymous reader writes "Seagate has agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleges that the company mislead customers by selling them hard disk drives with less capacity than the company advertised. The suit states that Seagate's use of the decimal definition of the storage capacity term "gigabyte" was misleading and inaccurate: whereby 1GB = 1 billion bytes. In actuality, 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes — a difference of approximately 7% from Seagate's figures. Seagate is saying it will offer a cash refund or free backup and recovery software."

Re:Cash or Backup?

[flyingsquid]

Yes, cash seems like a good option, but the problem is that Seagate defines the dollar as having 93 cents.

Re:Yet Again, the Courts Drop the Ball

[emurphy42]

The problem is that you can't say "gibibyte" without sounding like a fucking tool. :)

Re:Misleading by being correct?

[fredklein]

Wikipedia notes its techie-colloquial usage, and states that it is incorrect according to the SI/metric standard.


Too bad we're "techies" and not scientists. Also too bad we don't use the metric system in the USA. As a matter of fact, we wouldn't touch it with a 3.04800 meter pole.

If only....

[MrKevvy]

"In its out-of-court settlement, Seagate proposed to pay $1000000 in damages. When the plaintiffs signed off on the agreement, Seagate lawyers indicated that this was a binary figure, paid the plaintiffs sixty-four dollars in cash and departed, apparently in some haste."

Another enhancement for Newegg!

[frankmu]

i think Newegg can add a "class-action lawsuit" button next to the rebate button, so they can help their customers use their money responsibly. it's the only place i buy my stuff from, and they would have proof of purchase information on file. heck, they can be like Steve Jobs, and just credit me for more purchases from their store!

Re:Ahh, another valueless settlement.

[Smauler]

yeah pretty worthless, I've bought $1000 worth of drive from them, but that's after jan 1 2006. Even if if it was before that, I would have to file 10 seperate claims for ~$5 each. Meanwhile the cocksucking trial lawyers get a cool 1.8mibillion in cash.

Don't exaggerate, there, I fixed that for you.

Re:SI units

[Myopic]

The SI folks wisely realized that moving time to a base 10 unit was not practical because the natural division of days into years could never be forced into base-10 units comfortably. Instead, they acknowledge the usefulness of these non-SI units as acceptable for use in spite of their non-base-10 nature.

I totally agree! Now when can we please have reasonable measures of small quantities of volume, based on a unit approximately the size of two cupped hands? That's a human-understandable unit. Since it's based on cupped hands, we'll call it a "cup".

My Salary Calculation

[bangzilla]

I received an offer letter for employment many moons ago that stated that my salary would be "$65k" - When they tried to pay me $65,000 a year there was hell to pay (so as to speak). We settled on $66,560 :-)

Re:Seems Silly to me

[Myopic]

Dude, you just blew my mind, seriously. I never thought of that before.

Re:Direct Link to claims

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have a script that logins to all our production boxes and queries the 3ware controllers for seagate serial numbers. 5% of 500+ drives of various sizes .... lots of money here.

Re:SI units

[darthflo]

We had that kind of units. They went by the names of ell, foot, inch. After scientists realized that those units were pure idiocy for any kind of scientific work (and missed any kind of logic), they were replaced by the international system of units (abbr. SI). Units like the meters and grams have started replacing "old" units internationally starting in the 19th century and as for today, no civilized nation would ever have the idiotic idea to use something as arbitrary as a foot anymore, now would it?

Re:SI units

[Atario]

What's your problem with "meh be byte"?

Meh be byte, meh be bit, who knows? Meh be we should just forget it and go have a beer.

Re:Ahh, another valueless settlement.

[darthflo]

Wait, the Flying Spaghetti Monster damned the box?

Re:SI units

[jamesh]

I think that the Henry, and Coulomb are odd sounding units. It doesn't matter, they're the standard units.

On the other hand, the Fonzie is a very cool sounding unit.

Re:wow.... are you clueless!

[Mozk]

I like how your username sort of matches with your ID. :P
A bit off-topic, but I did post with no karma bonus.

Re:wow.... are you clueless!

[Mozk]

Oops, apparently I didn't.

Re:Think this will set precedent?

[db32]

I take offense to that. I have a very kind and polite tree stump in my front yard that is arguably much more intelligent than "vaginal_flatulance" has demonstrated themselves to be.

Re:Direct Link to claims

[justthisdude]

Interestingly, the fine print indecates they will actually reimburse you 7% less than you were expecting...

--

"There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who think in binary, and those who don't"

Re:Think this will set precedent?

[tchuladdiass]

I was more upset when I ordered a case of hard drives -- the shipping container said "Quantity: 1K", and I only got 1000 hard drives, not the 1024 I was expecting.

Re:Think this will set precedent?

[darthflo]

That's great for you! I hope you, for one, welcome your kind and polite tree stump overlords.

Re:Think this will set precedent?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was pretty funny. Not a troll!

Re:RTFM

[2short]

Those are stupid words made up words too, but were made up by knowledgeable people with good intentions.