Details on proposed Seagate class action settlement revealed
By Donald Melanson 
posted October 22nd 2007 1:42PM
posted October 22nd 2007 1:42PM
It looks like those that bought a Seagate hard drive in the past few years could possibly be in store for a few freebies or a bit of cash, at least if a proposed class action settlement goes ahead. According to a recently-launched website for the settlement, the suit centers on alleged misleading sales and marketing by Seagate, which stated that "purchasers of the drives would receive approximately 7% more usable storage capacity than they actually received." To make up for that allegedly egregious offense, the settlement proposes that anyone who purchased a drive between March 22nd, 2001 and September 26, 2007 (which wasn't pre-installed in a system) receive either some free backup and recovery software or a cash payment equivalent to five percent of the price paid for the hard drive. To get in on that potential windfall, however, you'll have to sign yourself up as part of the class action on the website linked below, where you can also opt out of the suit if you so choose.[Thanks, Joey]
I bought a maxtor (seagate now) drive, and the box said 20 extra GB.. when I installed it, I only saw the 300 or 289 free gb's, what happened to the xtra 20 ??
I believe this is what the lawsuit is about.
Its like when DVD burners first came out, and some still say it today on retail boxes, "4.7 gigabytes" yeah, right... how about 4.3, why don't people get sue happy over that?
the way I see it...
When giga prefixes a decimal term it means 10^9
When giga prefixes a binary term it means 2^30
Byte is a binary term. (am I wrong)?
1GB = 1024^3
1Gg = 10^9 (Giga grams? ohms, farads, meters(all are decimal)
hard drives store bytes, they should be measured in binary terms. Am I missing something? I did claim the money, I like Seagate better then other mfgs, I feel bad, things need to change.(I needed that #4 McD's meal!)
The thing about class action lawsuits is that the attorney gets the money. The "victims" only get a token settlement. These types of cases are the worst. Somebody decided to file a lawsuit over something trivial and common and the company settles to save themselves the negative publicity and costs of a trial. I am taking steps to have myself excluded so the attorney can't benefit from "representing" me.