Seagate Class Action Suit

[Kelemvor]

Just got this today in my inbox... Looks like it basically says Seagate claimed 7% more storage space than you really get form a hard drive...

If you purchased a Seagate brand hard disc drive between March 22, 2001 and September 26, 2007, a proposed class action settlement may affect you. A hearing has been scheduled in San Francisco Superior Court to approve the settlement. Under the settlement, you may have the right to make a claim for cash or software. You also may choose to exclude yourself from the settlement. Alternatively, you may file written objections to the settlement and appear (or have your own attorney appear) at the court hearing. If the settlement is approved and you do not exclude yourself, you give up the right to sue for the claims the settlement resolves, and you will be bound by the terms of the settlement. To learn more about or exercise any of your rights, please read below and visit www.harddrive-settlement.com.

The lawsuit is Cho v. Seagate Technology (US) Holdings, Inc., San Francisco Superior Court, Case No. 453195. In the suit, the plaintiff alleges that in the sale and marketing of hard disc drives, Seagate stated that purchasers of the drives would receive approximately 7% more usable storage capacity than they actually received. Seagate has denied and continues to deny each and all of plaintiff's claims, and denies that anyone has been harmed or deserves compensation. The Court has not made a decision on the merits.

You are a member of the settlement class if, between March 22, 2001 and September 26, 2007, you purchased in the United States a new Seagate brand hard disc drive from an authorized Seagate retailer or distributor, separately as a Seagate product that was not pre-installed into and bundled with a personal computer or other electronic device.

As part of the settlement, Seagate will make certain disclosures regarding the storage capacity of its retail hard drives.

In addition, if you submit a valid claim, you will receive free backup and recovery software, or a cash payment equivalent to five percent of the net amount you paid for the hard drive (excluding taxes or rebates). To receive the software or the cash payment, you must submit a claim form available at www.harddrive-settlement.com by March 10, 2008. You may submit a claim form for each qualifying drive you purchased. To obtain the cash payment, you must have purchased your drive before January 1, 2006 and you must submit appropriate documentation or the serial number for each drive.

If the settlement is approved, plaintiff's counsel will apply for an award of attorneys' fees, expenses and incentive awards not to exceed $1,792,000, to be paid separately from and in addition to the benefits available to settlement class members.

All claims of settlement class members which were or could have been asserted in the litigation, based upon the facts alleged in the litigation (as well as in a related case entitled Lazar v. Seagate Technology LLC, et al., San Francisco Superior Court, Case No. 439700; and California Court of Appeal, Case No. A116350) will be released. This means that if you do not exclude yourself from the settlement class, you will give up the right to sue for the claims the settlement resolves, and you will be bound by the terms of the settlement.

If you do not want to participate in this class action or be bound by this settlement you must exclude yourself from the settlement class by submitting a written request for exclusion which includes your full name and address and your request to be excluded from the class. Mail your request for exclusion to Hard Drive Settlement, c/o Rust Consulting, Inc., P.O. Box 1240, Minneapolis, MN 55400-1240. Your written request for exclusion must be received by December 21, 2007. If you exclude yourself, you will not receive the benefits of the settlement, and you cannot object to the settlement.

If you wish to object to the settlement, appear at the settlement hearing, have your own attorney appear at the settlement hearing, or intervene in the case, you must file your objection, request to appear, or request to intervene with the San Francisco Superior Court located at 400 McAllister Street, San Francisco, California 94102 and you must send copies to the attorneys for both parties. The plaintiff's attorney is Brian R. Strange, Strange & Carpenter, 12100 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1900, Los Angeles, CA 90025. Seagate's attorney is Peter S. Hecker, Heller Ehrman LLP, 333 Bush Street, San Francisco, CA 94104. For additional detailed instructions go to www.harddrive-settlement.com. All objections and requests to appear or intervene must be received by the court and attorneys by December 21, 2007.

DO NOT CONTACT THE COURT OR SEAGATE CONCERNING THIS NOTICE OR THIS LAWSUIT. If you would like more information about this notice or this case, please visit www.harddrive-settlement.com. If you do not have internet access, you may request additional information by mail from counsel for plaintiff, as set forth above.

 

[NFS4]

Yeah, just got it to my Gmail account about 10 minutes ago.

 

[DivideBYZero]

meh

 

[jonmcc33]

LOL! Anyone will sue for anything these days. Money sure corrupts the weak minded.

 

[imported_LoKe]

Doesn't everyone do this?

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

If the settlement is approved, plaintiff's counsel will apply for an award of attorneys' fees, expenses and incentive awards not to exceed $1,792,000, to be paid separately from and in addition to the benefits available to settlement class members.

Nice

 

[Brainonska511]

I recently bought a Seagate drive to replace my dead notebook hard drive (~9/15/07), but I haven't heard of this.

 

[Aharami]

Originally posted by: BrunoPuntzJones

If the settlement is approved, plaintiff's counsel will apply for an award of attorneys' fees, expenses and incentive awards not to exceed $1,792,000, to be paid separately from and in addition to the benefits available to settlement class members.

Nice

the lawyers will the only ones laughing all the way to the bank

 

[AkumaX]

wtf i just got this too

if theyre doing the Gb != gb crap, shouldn't all the hdd manufacturers get sued?

 

[TwiceOver]

Is this another formatted vs. unformatted capacity suit? If so it is not really Seagate's fault that formatting chews up space.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: AkumaX
wtf i just got this too

if theyre doing the Gb != gb crap, shouldn't all the hdd manufacturers get sued?

Well that is ~2%, and this claims 7%. I can only assume that they are being dicks and moaning about formatted space. Seagate can just argue that they have no direct impact on the way the OS of your choice formats the space and boom, no case.

You can use a drive raw, if you wish, for example...just not in windows, AFAIK.

Dumb lawsuit anyhow.

 

[Pugnax]

These things only make the lawyers more money. The ones who really "suffered" (if that is even the case) usually end up with 5 bucks and about 10 wasted hours.

 

[krotchy]

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Originally posted by: AkumaX
wtf i just got this too

if theyre doing the Gb != gb crap, shouldn't all the hdd manufacturers get sued?

Well that is ~2%, and this claims 7%. I can only assume that they are being dicks and moaning about formatted space. Seagate can just argue that they have no direct impact on the way the OS of your choice formats the space and boom, no case.

You can use a drive raw, if you wish, for example...just not in windows, AFAIK.

Dumb lawsuit anyhow.

2^30/10^9 = 1.0737%

Hence, Gigabytes have 7% less space than Gibibytes

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Well that is ~2%, and this claims 7%.

What krotchy said. And formatting loses a negligible amount of space. Please dump the myth that formatting and partitioning are somehow responsible.

You lose 5% with hard drives in the megabyte range, 7% in the gigabytes, and 9% from terabyte hard drives. Take a 320GB hard drive and install it, notice about 298GB available. Now multiply 320 by .93, what do you get? About a 7% loss.

 

[TwiceOver]

Heh, just got the notice also. Seagate has always done right by me, I have no complaints. Not going to waste my time with this.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: Steve

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Well that is ~2%, and this claims 7%.

What krotchy said. And formatting loses a negligible amount of space. Please dump the myth that formatting and partitioning are somehow responsible.

You lose 5% with hard drives in the megabyte range, 7% in the gigabytes, and 9% from terabyte hard drives. Take a 320GB hard drive and install it, notice about 298GB available. Now multiply 320 by .93, what do you get? About a 7% loss.

How does the percentage increase?

 

[tcsenter]

Yep, I was wondering when Seagate would be announcing their settlement, after WDC. It's far cheaper to settle than to 'win' in court.

There is no question these lawsuits are completely without merit. Hard drive manufacturers have always measured their storage capacities correctly in Gigabytes (one billion bytes), and have been disclosing the correct definition of a GB on the box or in product marketing for years now.

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: Aharami

Originally posted by: BrunoPuntzJones

If the settlement is approved, plaintiff's counsel will apply for an award of attorneys' fees, expenses and incentive awards not to exceed $1,792,000, to be paid separately from and in addition to the benefits available to settlement class members.

Nice

the lawyers will the only ones laughing all the way to the bank

Yeah...just got this email this morning too.

These class actions are easy to do with only a little basis. The attorney's get the customer lists and then mass mail. Almost every idiot will sign on seeing big dollars ahead.

When these pay out it's usually a few bucks for every person, but the counsel gets 30%+ of the pot.

 

[Tiamat]

yup i got it.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: Steve
You lose 5% with hard drives in the megabyte range, 7% in the gigabytes, and 9% from terabyte hard drives. Take a 320GB hard drive and install it, notice about 298GB available.

False. A 320GB hard drive would equal about 298GiB.

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Originally posted by: Steve

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Well that is ~2%, and this claims 7%.

What krotchy said. And formatting loses a negligible amount of space. Please dump the myth that formatting and partitioning are somehow responsible.

You lose 5% with hard drives in the megabyte range, 7% in the gigabytes, and 9% from terabyte hard drives. Take a 320GB hard drive and install it, notice about 298GB available. Now multiply 320 by .93, what do you get? About a 7% loss.

How does the percentage increase?

(2^40) / (10^12) = 1.09951163

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Originally posted by: Steve
You lose 5% with hard drives in the megabyte range, 7% in the gigabytes, and 9% from terabyte hard drives. Take a 320GB hard drive and install it, notice about 298GB available.

False. A 320GB hard drive would equal about 298GiB.

You're right, I don't keep track of the terminology and it affects my math, but I'm hoping that at least the idea of what I'm saying gets across - Joe User will look in My Computer and say "Hey! This 320 gig hard drive is showing 298 gigs! WTF?"

 

[Kelemvor]

Originally posted by: TwiceOver
Heh, just got the notice also. Seagate has always done right by me, I have no complaints. Not going to waste my time with this.

Same here. I always buy Seagate drives. It did say that you can dispute the claim too which I thought I might do just to do my part to stop crap lawsuits like this.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: TwiceOver
Is this another formatted vs. unformatted capacity suit? If so it is not really Seagate's fault that formatting chews up space.

It's not about formatted vs unformatted, it's about the definition of a GB as 2^30 vs 10^9.

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Well that is ~2%, and this claims 7%. I can only assume that they are being dicks and moaning about formatted space. Seagate can just argue that they have no direct impact on the way the OS of your choice formats the space and boom, no case.

You can use a drive raw, if you wish, for example...just not in windows, AFAIK.

Dumb lawsuit anyhow.

The difference is ~2% with KB, ~7% with GB.

Yes, it's a stupid lawsuit though. I think it's stupid that they use the decimal version of a GB instead of the binary version that makes more sense in the context of computers, but it's not something to sue over. They even put the definition they use on the damn box.

 

[Exterous]

How can they sue if the size assumptions are listed on the box?