Fujitsu Hard Drive Lawsuit: 10-21-2003 Important all Fujitsu HD owners E-mail for settlement!!!

[Confused]

I've got one of these drives around somewhere here.

Have to dig it out.

Dave, what about me being over here in the UK? How will that affect things?


Garry

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Confused
I've got one of these drives around somewhere here.

Have to dig it out.

Dave, what about me being over here in the UK? How will that affect things?


Garry

Good question Garry,

Send me an E-mail and I will send you an E-mail back with the E-mail address of the English Journalist I have been in contact with during the duration of this. We E-mailed each other back and forth last week.

 

[silverpig]

Wow, it's weird. I have a 6 GB Fujitsu drive from around then and it's still running like a champ. Outlasted my 30 gig Quantum Fireball AS and a very new Maxtor 40 gig that just died.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: silverpig
Wow, it's weird. I have a 6 GB Fujitsu drive from around then and it's still running like a champ. Outlasted my 30 gig Quantum Fireball AS and a very new Maxtor 40 gig that just died.

That is most likely a drive before the flawed Controllers were used. It happened mainly from the 20 gig drives and later built in late 1999 and beyond.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Confused
I've got one of these drives around somewhere here.

Have to dig it out.

Dave, what about me being over here in the UK? How will that affect things?


Garry

Below is an E-mail I got from the lead Journalist that has been covering this story from England:

David

No such thing as a class action exists under UK law. There can be joint activity where a group of plaintiffs get together and the case of one of them is put forward, funded by all. The outcome of this case could then be used as a legal precendent in subsequent actions by the rest of the group. In practice what one might expect to happen is that if the first action was successful then the defendents would settle other actions out of court.

I have to say: This is my understanding of the law, however neither I nor the PCA is a qualified legal advisor.

I'm happy for you to quote all of the above, but please ensure you include the final paragraph/sentence.

Regards

Keith

 

[Balt]

My family received a letter regarding this via the USPS.

However, I don't actually know if we have any Fujitsu drives. I've mostly bought Maxtor HD's for my system.

A few years ago my father bought an IBM computer for himself, however. Has IBM ever used these drives? The utility on http://www.hddclassactionsettlement.com/identify.php3 never gets past the "This utility will only take a few moments... please wait" stage.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson
I'm now in Canada, although at the time I purchased the drive I was living in the U.S.... I wonder if that affects my possibility to join the class action lawsuit? I still have the damned thing, because I thought that at some point I'll try and see if it can be erased and revived, and although I don't think I still have the receipt, I can just photocopy the entire label. It appears that they also want a receipt for another HD, and my statement that the purchase was made to replace the defective Fujitsu drive? grrrr, 40 GB gone to data heaven...

Hi there!

I tried to send an e-mail to administrator@hddclassactionsettlement.com, to add my claim to the list, but my e-mails keep bouncing back. Is there a fax number where I can send my name and address, along with the request to participate?

Thanks much, by the way, good job... I'm really pissed about that HD...

-------------------------------------------------
Hi Anita,

I can't PM back. I don't know if they have a Fax number, can call the Administrator 800 number and seeif the have a Fax line available.

Settlement Administrator at (800) 878-2618

HDD Class Action Settlement Administrator
P.O. Box 9000 #6146
Merrick, NY 11566-9000

 

[CZroe]

Just realized that this was in multiple topics 🙂

OK, here's my problem:

I was working at a local computer shop (They still call me in when they need my services 😉) sometime in Spring.
A customer brought in his PC in and sets it on the floor behind my chair while I'm working. It's like the sixth time he'd shown up since we'd last looked at his PC and told him what he needed (A new PSU). He shouldn't have been there. Anyway, I backed my chair out from the desk so I could stand up and his PC fell over. The PC was off, everything should have been OK and it was a small tower so the bang wasn't so bad, but the PC would not boot.

I suspected that the drive was dead on its own merits (Faulty chip), or, at most, accellerated by the knock, so I checked Fujitsu's site back in Spring and found that it was involved in a class-action lawsuit. I decided to wait and see 🙂 The drive was not spinning up or being detected by the system: symptoms of something more than a "head-assembly meets disk" accident.

Only thing is, the guy needed resolution. He snapped up my new 80GB WDSE drive "at cost" but I wasn't able to get the rebate thanks to a snafu at the post office so I lost money. Plus he "asked" that we try to recover his old Quicken files and resumes, apparantly he did taxes for almost 100 people and was a job recruiter!

I spent a month on the damn thing. The drive would usually never spin up or be detected by the system. When it was detected, it would stop spinning in the middle of a file copy process. Sometimes I just had to tell DOS to retry a few times, once all I had to do was tap the drive to get it to spin again, but usually I'd have to pack it away for another few days because it would refuse to spin up for the rest of the night. If only there were an application which could "fractionally" image a HDD. I got a ton of the quicken files backed up, but nothing useable by the customer because it was all 8.3 format and impossible to integrate back into Quicken.

This drive has certainly caused the store a great headache and a bad reputation (Well, the owner was pretty good at doing that too so I left 😉), both things which are not covered in the lawsuit. I still have the drive and would love to get the thing fully recovered, but I can't front the money and wait for the settlement.

So what do you guys think I should do? Tell the recovery place to do this now then watch the whole saga and send Fujitsu the bill come Spring 2004? I can't wait until 2004 to do the recovery, I know that much! 🙁

If there are alot of these drives out there, perhaps the recovery places would love to get a head start on the insurgence of HDDs to recover when they know it's guaranteed ca$h.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: CZroe
Just realized that this was in multiple topics 🙂

OK, here's my problem:

I was working at a local computer shop (They still call me in when they need my services 😉) sometime in Spring.
A customer brought in his PC in and sets it on the floor behind my chair while I'm working. It's like the sixth time he'd shown up since we'd last looked at his PC and told him what he needed (A new PSU). He shouldn't have been there. Anyway, I backed my chair out from the desk so I could stand up and his PC fell over. The PC was off, everything should have been OK and it was a small tower so the bang wasn't so bad, but the PC would not boot.

I suspected that the drive was dead on its own merits (Faulty chip), or, at most, accellerated by the knock, so I checked Fujitsu's site back in Spring and found that it was involved in a class-action lawsuit. I decided to wait and see 🙂 The drive was not spinning up or being detected by the system: symptoms of something more than a "head-assembly meets disk" accident.

Only thing is, the guy needed resolution. He snapped up my new 80GB WDSE drive "at cost" but I wasn't able to get the rebate thanks to a snafu at the post office so I lost money. Plus he "asked" that we try to recover his old Quicken files and resumes, apparantly he did taxes for almost 100 people and was a job recruiter!

I spent a month on the damn thing. The drive would usually never spin up or be detected by the system. When it was detected, it would stop spinning in the middle of a file copy process. Sometimes I just had to tell DOS to retry a few times, once all I had to do was tap the drive to get it to spin again, but usually I'd have to pack it away for another few days because it would refuse to spin up for the rest of the night. If only there were an application which could "fractionally" image a HDD. I got a ton of the quicken files backed up, but nothing useable by the customer because it was all 8.3 format and impossible to integrate back into Quicken.

This drive has certainly caused the store a great headache and a bad reputation (Well, the owner was pretty good at doing that too so I left 😉), both things which are not covered in the lawsuit. I still have the drive and would love to get the thing fully recovered, but I can't front the money and wait for the settlement.

So what do you guys think I should do? Tell the recovery place to do this now then watch the whole saga and send Fujitsu the bill come Spring 2004? I can't wait until 2004 to do the recovery, I know that much! 🙁

If there are alot of these drives out there, perhaps the recovery places would love to get a head start on the insurgence of HDDs to recover when they know it's guaranteed ca$h.

So sorry to hear. Your shop is not responsible for the data loss by your customer. Anything can happen to any PC at any time. It is your Customer's responsibility to have his data backed up. End of that, admirable in you guys trying to do your best for the guy anyway.

Back to the drive. The main reason for the total failure of the drive is the way they designed the unit around the faulty chip. The chip randomly programs the platter because of that you cannot simply put a new controller board on the platter with a good chip, it would still not be able to access any discernable data. This design and faulty chip was a total 100% Engineering disaster that should've never happened. It happened because people went too far in cutting corners.

In short, that data is gone forever 🙁


PS - I'll help you understand why the drive died when you tipped the PC over even if it was off. The bump moved the heads so that when the next power up sequence occured the Faulty chip could not recover any positioning at all. Again this is not your fault. This situation should've never happened.

 

[CZroe]

Thnx! That's the kinda data I needed to know. How did you come across the technicalities of the "defect?" I couldn't find it anywhere a few months ago.

I was attempting what I could more for the people who relied on him for his tax work than for him as a customer who demanded it (I saw it as a disaster that affected many). Plus, there were a ton of resume's on there, so I shudder to think of those who may never get a job because of this. It happened right in front of the guy and convieniently didn't work again and we didn't know about the defect so it would have been hard to deny fault. 🙁

Any idea if the "random" nature of the chip's function would make recovery a more expensive job?

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: CZroe
Thnx! That's the kinda data I needed to know. How did you come across the technicalities of the "defect?" I couldn't find it anywhere a few months ago.

I was attempting what I could more for the people who relied on him for his tax work than for him as a customer who demanded it (I saw it as a disaster that affected many). Plus, there were a ton of resume's on there, so I shudder to think of those who may never get a job because of this. It happened right in front of the guy and convieniently didn't work again and we didn't know about the defect so it would have been hard to deny fault. 🙁

Any idea if the "random" nature of the chip's function would make recovery a more expensive job?

"Any idea if the "random" nature of the chip's function would make recovery a more expensive job?"

Based on the nature of the design and the flaw of the chip where it randomly scrambles the assignment of clusters where data resides, makes getting useful data very close to impossible. It's like encryption without a key.

Back when this first broke I researched the chip and the design of the controller.

Again if the data was that critical and the guy didn't have a backup of any kind of the data? You are not responsible no matter what happened right in front of the guy.

That being said I have had no contact with any Drive Recovery services. Only thing I could think of if you want to try to get any kind of data off a drive that has suffered this is a custom firmware (in ASCII mode) on a working controller that would put the drive in read only mode and stream the data off the platter. Then you would have to make heads or tails out of all the scrambled data. Wouldn't be pretty, that's for sure.

Edit: I saw your post in General Hardware. I'll edit the main post to possibly look in here to one central location for a dialog on latest happenings with this. The Legal process is very slow unfortunately especially dealing with money to be given back to wronged Consumers.

As you can see the Recovery Services didn't jump all over this to try and capitalize on this unfortunate situation because there really is no "Recovery" for them to do. That shows you the seriousness of both the design flaw and the failure of the main chip centered around that poor design. Some of this can be attributed to the nature of "One Chip Wonder" technology we have now however there is plenty of room for a backup plan for recovery when you cross from the digital to analog workd which is what does occur in a drive where heads get positioned over assigned clusters to store data. It is not much different from looking at the doors in a Storage Warehouse in the physical world.

I hope that all Electronics Manufacturers and Engineers past, present and future learn from this huge blunder and it never happens again.

Dave

 

[Crimson]

Its a good thing that this settlement, which probably will involve about 4 members of Anandtech, is stickied to the top of 2 forums.. Can we get rid of this thing so we don't have 154 topics stickied? PLEASE!? There could be a nuclear attack on New York and it wouldn't be stickied..

 

[Ichinisan]

Aparantly, you do not realize how wide-spread these drives are. I believe they are also under other brand names like "Tri-Gem"

In the shop, I've seen plenty since this has been up. Luckily, I've had a URL for them (Thanks David).

Maximum PC gave a stern warning to all their readers after having a 100% failure rate on all Fujitsu drives. Their readers are the same target audience AT members are. Plus, this settlement still has a way to go (This is still only a proposed settlement).

 

[Crimson]

Its been sticked for over a month.. anyone who cares knows about it now...

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Crimson
Its been sticked for over a month.. anyone who cares knows about it now...

It is very apparent you do not read and do not pay attention no matter what area. This issue is an ongoing suit because of a huge Corporation screwing over the world. It is a black eye on the Industry and the people fought back including people here on Anandtech. So you were only lucky in not getting one of these drives and again another situation where you are not personally affected so you poo poo on everyone else. How Noble of you.

 

[Crimson]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Crimson
Its been sticked for over a month.. anyone who cares knows about it now...

It is very apparent you do not read and do not pay attention no matter what area. This issue is an ongoing suit because of a huge Corporation screwing over the world. It is a black eye on the Industry and the people fought back including people here on Anandtech. So you were only lucky in not getting one of these drives and again another situation where you are not personally affected so you poo poo on everyone else. How Noble of you.

Well, I went through the thread here.. and noticed maybe 4 or 5 people that said they MAY be effected.. and maybe 1 or 2 that really appear to be effected. Out of 123,000+ registered forum members.. we have maybe a dozen people effected? Probably less.. I don't see how this warrants a sticky is _2_ forums.. one of which has NOTHING to do with hardware..

And stop with the overdramitization.. This is not a huge corporation "Screwing over the world".. my god.. Its not like they are releasing some virus on the earth which is going to wipe out the planet.. they produced some bad hard drives, and may not be owning up to it.. sounds to me like a corporation being a pain in the ass, not "Screwing over the world"..

Everyone who cares to know about it at AT, knows about it.. lets lose the sticky in OT at the very least..

 

[compuwiz1]

Crimson, is the real problem here, that you have not evolved to a wheel mouse, and you are still on AOL dialup? I feel for ya pal...tell us all about it. 😉
FWIW, I have 2 computers at work, which have had 2 HD's die in the past month. Guess which drives? You got it, Fujitsu. I just now read this thread for the first time today, since I had no prior reason to, up until now. Now, put that in your pipe and smoke it! This info is going to be extremely useful, since we have over 150 comps, which probably half of them have the same drives.

 

[Crimson]

Great.. so lets keep it sticked for the next 2-3 years.. just in case. And lets sticky every other computer product recall in the OFF TOPIC forum.

 

[Ulfwald]

I have 3 hdds that went out, all fujitsu, all have that chip. So I think that keeping it stickied is a good idea

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Ulfwald
I have 3 hdds that went out, all fujitsu, all have that chip. So I think that keeping it stickied is a good idea

3 of em, oh man :frown::frown::frown:

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Crimson, wanna buy a HD? I'll sell it to you cheap...Then I don't have to refer to this thread anymore, so you got one less user to worry about. Better still, buy everybody's Fujitsus, for that matter, and then you can be at peace and happy that the entire "Off Topic" forum is available for "OMG! NO! AIIIEEEE!" threads...

What exactly is your problem? This forum is dedicated to computers, first and last. The lawsuit qualifies as an ongoing problem, but it's not ONLY limited to hardware now. If having stickies bugs you so much, why don't you try ask the mods to remove the "Shameless recruiting" thread as well, since it's all over the forums anyway. See you when you're back from your vacation.

 

[Crimson]

Vacation? WTF are you talking about? Anyways.. like I said, I see very few people actually effected by this, and those who are know about it.. Besides, like all class action lawsuits the only one to profit will be the lawyers.. at best people will get $20 out of this.

And I agree, the recruiting threads should be removed as well.. thanks for pointing that out.. At least that thread could be argued to somehow relate to more than 4 people here though.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Crimson
Vacation? WTF are you talking about? Anyways.. like I said, I see very few people actually effected by this, and those who are know about it.. Besides, like all class action lawsuits the only one to profit will be the lawyers.. at best people will get $20 out of this.

And I agree, the recruiting threads should be removed as well.. thanks for pointing that out.. At least that thread could be argued to somehow relate to more than 4 people here though.

That is exactly the point and why this issue is so important. The fact that over 300,000 people (yes, mainly in Europe but many in the U.S. too) have this as their only recourse is a travesty hopefully never repeated again in the Computer Industry. It is also far from over and should not be swept under the rug, that could open the door to some other unscrupulous Corporation to do the same thing. There should be much more done to Fujitsu, they should no longer be allowed to make and sell Hard Drives since they never owed up to what they have done.

I also agree with you that the settlement may in fact be a joke compared to what the drives originally cost and the cost and headache of replacing them further exaberating the point.

 

[dmcowen674]

Hey Guys (Mods) I got the PM about letting the sticky go on this Thread on the Fujitsu Hard Drive case to make room for the Holiday threads I just can't reply back since off the Subscription servers.

There is a Thread on this in General Hardware so will keep any updates on the case there. The next Court hearing is in January. Thanks and Happy Holidays