Anyone get an email about Seagate class-action lawsuit

[JimLewandowski]

(from memory, I deleted the email) Seems some attorneys are suing Seagate since the user gets 8% LESS disc storage than they advertise on their specs.

I'd love to be an attorney and be able to generate my own money-grab. Actually, I'd prefer not to be an attorney (or know any).

 

[Kari]

This topic was widely reported when Seagate settled the class action suit back in late 2007 (Seagate settles class action: cash back over misleading hard drive capacities).

Early last year some bloggers, who did not notice it was already old news, found the story and posted it falsely as news.

Kari

 

[goldfrobe]

I have not seen this email, however I did find information on it online at Cho v. Seagate Technology (US) Holdings, Inc.. I think this is a case of binary vs decimal and the average person who doesn't care and or bother to understand how things may work. The sticker on my car may say I get 35mpg highway however that would be unlikely even under optimal conditions. If segate should be sued for anything maybe it should be for the number of faulty drives I've seen in the past year.
I do think it would be easier on the average home user if hard drive sizes were posted on the drive in decimal and not binary. However I know this is not feasable as there are more factors into the capacity of a hard drive such as the filesystem used, allocation unit size in the filesystem clustering, and also how the BIOS itself recognises the drive and intreprets it.

 

[severedsolo]

some people will sue over anything... from what i understand this is to do with the practice of selling GB's in 1000MB's instead of 1024MB's?

so what? does anyone actually count it in 1024's anyway? my school always taught me that a GB is 1000MB not once did they mention its actually 1024, are they gonna sue my school too?

 

[JimLewandowski]

I didn't think this was spam as it came into an email address I rarely, rarely use.

I thought about the car analogy. 35 is an absolute number. Disks are accurately rated to their "capacity". Depending on YOUR choice of cluster size and the aforementioned decimal/binary...

 

[goldfrobe]

I agree people sue for stupid things. The only thing I think would be fair is if seagate and others explained on the box, or a paper inside the box, that the capacity is measured in binary gigabytes and not decimal gigabytes and capacity will vary upon the use of specific software.

 

[JimLewandowski]

I agree people sue for stupid things. The only thing I think would be fair is if seagate and others explained on the box, or a paper inside the box, that the capacity is measured in binary gigabytes and not decimal gigabytes and capacity will vary upon the use of specific software.

Does it make a difference? Would you not purchase a 200GB drive that really only stores 185GB? Granted, the numbers (binary vs. decimal) do skew the larger the capacity...

 

[vbkun]

I was reading and thought this could have been something serious about their zillion discs failing
-.-