Seagate Hard Drive Settlement Now Online - Damn!!

[imposter]

Hmm. This is interesting. Perhaps if anyone cares ill publish it in my schools news paper. Anyone going to claim any money? Whats in the software that makes it retail at 40 bucks.

 

[UnrealAlex]

In my opinion, relatively very few people are as knowledgeable about these matters as you guys are. Your regular family man Joe needs to buy a 120GB hard drive, he goes and buys one that's marked to have 120GB. He plugs it in and finds out that he's missing close to 10GB of space. In my opinion, the hard drive companies should advertise how much space you actually get to use. But I don't think it's that big of a deal.

 

[petteyg359]

UnrealAlex, may I direct you to my post up a few. He DID get 120GB. Windows just isn't showing it properly. Hard drives were made this way before Windows ever existed. I could say all the blame lies with Microsoft, but that'd be just as stupid as saying all the blame lies with Seagate, or any other manufacturer. The blame, in truth, lies with the American non-educational system that doesn't teach people simple stuff like the difference between binary and decimal. I have a 540MB hard drive from a 386. Guess how the drive is sized? KB = 1000B, MB = 1000KB. Yup, it's decimal.

thideras: When people get unreasonably upset over something little like this, they don't listen to you when you're nice and polite

 

[Spion]

This is my take on the issue

I have a 250gb Seagate HD on my current rig, only 232gb is useable, that's a difference of roughly 7%. Why should I have to eat that? The manufacturer should make the necessary accommodations so when I plug it into my system I can use the 250gb I paid for. Sounds fair to me.

(250*10^9)/(1024^3)=232.8

looks like you're not losing any of your hard drive space to me.

 

[petteyg359]

How about I say it this way. You are paying for 250 trillion bytes. Windows shows things in binary (multiples of 1024). So Windows will claim you only have 232.8GB. However, if you look at the total capacity in the properties page, it will give it to you in bytes. Guess what? You have 250 trillion bytes capacity! In fact, you likely have more bytes than you paid for. My 160GB drive has 160,031,014,912. I got 31 million free bonus bytes.

Oh yeah, by the way, I was thinking about suing Intel for losing somewhere around a half terabyte (OMG!) on my RAID5.

 

[Spion]

^ exactly. you are getting told how many bytes you have its just that the number of GB are in base 10 instead of base 2 when you are shopping for a hard drive.

 

[g0dM@n]

So who decides which is the correct way to interpret??

Which one is the RIGHT ONE, decimal or binary??

How can anyone decide who is RIGHT, and then BLAME the other for being wrong?? In my opinion, you can't... only b/c BOTH methods have become standards, depending on how you look at it.

They should assess the situation, FIX the damn thing, and screw the freaking lawsuits... some people are just so darn greedy!!! If Seagate was a junk company I could understand, but they're a GREAT company with quality products, great customer service, and has one of the best warranties.

What other company offers 5 yrs STANDARD on all of their hard drives? The only other company that I see do that is Western Digital, and that's ONLY on the raptor series...

 

[djrussell]

LOL... I said that cuz I didn't recall flaming djrussel... I don't even recall directing anything at all to him or of what he said... so I figured he was messin' with me, which transforms me into "WTF g0dM@n"... well, not really, but it's getting late and I need sleep... none of this makes sense to you - that is the goal!!

post #27.

you quoted me and then seemingly unrelatedly went on about HOT coffee and all. huh??? you want me to spill hot coffee on myself? you want to spill it on me? did i get flamed? oh well. no burn no foul.

on a side note, it's very possible i could get flamed by some hot coffee. i live in everett (ie seattle) and my wife just stopped working for a coffee roaster/distributor.

 

[g0dM@n]

post #27.

you quoted me and then seemingly unrelatedly went on about HOT coffee and all. huh??? you want me to spill hot coffee on myself? you want to spill it on me? did i get flamed? oh well. no burn no foul.

on a side note, it's very possible i could get flamed by some hot coffee. i live in everett (ie seattle) and my wife just stopped working for a coffee roaster/distributor.

lol... i was just extending on what you were saying, and then made a stupid analogy.

 

[hotrod469]

I think this happend to WD a few years back, I will see if I can find something on it.
EDIT* http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060630-7174.html

 

[Shell]

FOR EFFING SAKE, YOU ARE GETTING 250GB WHEN YOU PURCHASE THAT 250GB DRIVE. You have just purchased 250 DECIMAL GB. It is NOT Seagate's (or ANY other manufacturers') fault that M$, in their inifinite wisdom, decided to display sizes in binary in their OS. They could easily have programmed it to show things in decimal. You paid for 250 decimal GB, you got 250 decimal GB. Grow up and whine some more about it... This is a simple fact that should definitely NOT be hard to grasp.

QUOTE OF TRUTH IN EPIC PERPORTIONS

 

[knucklehead]

Yea he's good for some funny straight-shooting quotes. One I remember is (paraphrase) "We aren't out to change the world, our products basically help people store more crap."

"And watch porn."

Bill Watkins, His words.

 

[MadMan007]

I think this happend to WD a few years back, I will see if I can find something on it.
EDIT* http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060630-7174.html

Seagate and others should have learned from that lawsuit then, I'm not sure when the Seagate one was started though. WD didn't have to give cash settlements though just some cheese software.

 

[hotrod469]

Seagate and others should have learned from that lawsuit then, I'm not sure when the Seagate one was started though. WD didn't have to give cash settlements though just some cheese software.

You would think outher HD companies would have learned, they should pay me the big bucks to tell them stuff like that.

 

[Trottel]

Oh man, that form only has info for 1 drive, yet I have bought 6 expensive hard drives from seagate from 2003 to 2005. I still have them all too. If I can send out 6 forms for my drives, that will be a nice bonus!

I agree that this is very stupid though. It reminds me of something else. Porsche was sued for not having traction control in their Carrera GT. Someone crashed one and the wife sued. Idiots just like in this situation.

EDIT: GRR. How am I supposed to know where, what date, and how much I paid for each drive?

 

[petteyg359]

By having some form of proof of purchase. Please don't go on saying this is stupid and for idiots and then be a hypocrite and try to participate in it.

 

[g0dM@n]

By having some form of proof of purchase. Please don't go on saying this is stupid and for idiots and then be a hypocrite and try to participate in it.

I agree... if this whole thing is stupid, I don't think it makes sense to take Seagate's money.... or vice versa.

 

[Lian Li]

FOR EFFING SAKE, YOU ARE GETTING 250GB WHEN YOU PURCHASE THAT 250GB DRIVE. You have just purchased 250 DECIMAL GB. It is NOT Seagate's (or ANY other manufacturers') fault that M$, in their inifinite wisdom, decided to display sizes in binary in their OS. They could easily have programmed it to show things in decimal. You paid for 250 decimal GB, you got 250 decimal GB. Grow up and whine some more about it... This is a simple fact that should definitely NOT be hard to grasp.

Apologies in advance for whomever lacks wits and is offended by this.

The person telling me to grow up is the person yelling and cussing and taking subliminal at me for the simple fact that I am of a differing opinion than he, interesting.

In any case, since you in all your wisdom know about MS showing the capacity in binary, surely Seagate knows this and can make the necessary change to their hardware so when we plug it in it shows the capacity we paid for and without us having to do an algebraic equation to confirm it. Very simply solution indeed.

Guys you aren't "losing" space at all, you are looking at it incorrectly, your comparing 1000mb to 1024mb....1000 != 1024.

OK.......I have a 250gb hd, I have 10 25gb files on my computer, my computer shows 232 gb of useable space, that being said I should be able to save all 10 of those 25gb files to said hd with no problem, correct? I have a feeling only 9 will be able to be saved to it since MS is showing only 232 gb of free space. Which means I am infact losing space. Unless you can show me that you can infact store 250gb of files onto a drive that shows only 232 is available.

In my opinion, relatively very few people are as knowledgeable about these matters as you guys are. Your regular family man Joe needs to buy a 120GB hard drive, he goes and buys one that's marked to have 120GB. He plugs it in and finds out that he's missing close to 10GB of space. In my opinion, the hard drive companies should advertise how much space you actually get to use.

Agreed 100%

UnrealAlex, may I direct you to my post up a few. He DID get 120GB. Windows just isn't showing it properly. Hard drives were made this way before Windows ever existed. I could say all the blame lies with Microsoft, but that'd be just as stupid as saying all the blame lies with Seagate, or any other manufacturer. The blame, in truth, lies with the American non-educational system that doesn't teach people simple stuff like the difference between binary and decimal. I have a 540MB hard drive from a 386. Guess how the drive is sized? KB = 1000B, MB = 1000KB. Yup, it's decimal.

thideras: When people get unreasonably upset over something little like this, they don't listen to you when you're nice and polite

So if 232gb = 250gb, I will be able to store 250gb of files on that drive that windows shows only has 232gb avail? I find that hard to believe.

Being that thideras' comment about being nicer was in response to your comment to me, your comment in this post above is taken like it's aimed at me. I was not unreasonably upset about anything so you might want to get down off your high horse.

(250*10^9)/(1024^3)=232.8

looks like you're not losing any of your hard drive space to me.

I am if I can't store 250gb of files onto that drive. Can you prove to me that can be done?

 

[jstutman]

Ok here is the deal.

The seagate classaction lawsuit was filed by the SAME person who did the Western Digital class action.

The total estimated cost of the WD lawsuit was $30,500,000. There were an estimated 1 million customers affected which were entitled to a $30 software. They also agreed to pay a $500,000 fee/expense to the lawyers.

Cho is a little more greedier with Seagate, with a proposed attorney fee/expense of $1,792,000

 

[petteyg359]

The person telling me to grow up is the person yelling and cussing and taking subliminal at me for the simple fact that I am of a differing opinion than he, interesting.

Quite funny. Where'd I cuss? Where'd I "take subliminal" (whatever that means)? And AFAIK I'm not stating an opinion, I'm stating a fact.

In any case, since you in all your wisdom know about MS showing the capacity in binary, surely Seagate knows this and can make the necessary change to their hardware so when we plug it in it shows the capacity we paid for and without us having to do an algebraic equation to confirm it. Very simply solution indeed.

Multiplying by 1000^3 and dividing by 1024^3 is hardly algebraic. Why should Seagate change their hardware so it lies to the software? Your 250GB drive tells your OS you have 250 trillion bytes.

OK.......I have a 250gb hd, I have 10 25gb files on my computer, my computer shows 232 gb of useable space, that being said I should be able to save all 10 of those 25gb files to said hd with no problem, correct? I have a feeling only 9 will be able to be saved to it since MS is showing only 232 gb of free space. Which means I am infact losing space. Unless you can show me that you can infact store 250gb of files onto a drive that shows only 232 is available.

A 25GB file should be 25 trillion bytes if you're comparing them that way. In which case 10 of them will fit on the drive. You really need to quit arguing that 1024 = 1000, because it doesn't, and it never will. MS is again showing 232.8GB of BINARY space. And saying the drive is 250GB in decimal is correct. For it to be in binary, the unit size would be 250GiB. The i signifies a binary unit. Why Windows chooses to totally ignore this standard I don't know.

By the way, if you're going to be arguing about sizes, please properly capitalize your units. K=Kilo, M=Mega, G=Giga, T=Tera, b=bit, B=Byte. If you didn't know them, now you do, please use them in the future.

In January 1999, the International Electrotechnical Commission introduced the prefixes kibi-(Kibibyte), mebi-, gibi-, etc., and the symbols Ki, Mi, Gi, etc. to specify binary multiples of a quantity and eliminate this ambiguity.[16] The names for the new standard are derived from the first two letters of the original SI prefixes followed by bi, short for "binary". The new standard also clarifies that, from the point of view of the IEC, the SI prefixes will henceforth only have their base-10 meaning and never have a base-2 meaning.

I do believe XP came out after 1999. SP2 definitely did. This should have been fixed by them, not ignored. Might be going a bit off topic, but Microsoft is in an excellent position to make the general public that uses computers a tiny bit more tech-literate. Instead, they use incorrect units and cause lawsuits like this.

So if 232gb = 250gb, I will be able to store 250gb of files on that drive that windows shows only has 232gb avail? I find that hard to believe.

No, again. Windows should be stating 232GiB, not GB. You will be able to store 250GB of files (not really, because MFT and half-used clusters take some space), just not 250GiB. 250GiB is in binary, therefore larger.

Being that thideras' comment about being nicer was in response to your comment to me, your comment in this post above is taken like it's aimed at me. I was not unreasonably upset about anything so you might want to get down off your high horse.

I am if I can't store 250gb of files onto that drive. Can you prove to me that can be done?

Sorry, but I'm trying to prove a simple point here. Seagate is advertising in GB. They are selling GB. Not GiB. Windows is lying to you and claiming that GB are GiB. They are not, and the IEC standard saying so has existed since 1999 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix). My earlier post was directed at everyone arguing that they didn't get 250GB, not just you.

You like won't manage to store a full 250GB of discrete files on the drive, as the file system (MFT etc.) takes up some space itself, and if your files don't line up exactly on cluster boundaries you'll have a bit of wasted space. Again, that isn't Seagate's fault. I highly doubt anyone will ever come up with a filesystem that leaves every bit of space available. Of course you could put the whole drive into a solid archive, and then at least there wouldn't be wasted clusters, but still the MFT and such would take up space.

Hopefully this will educate some people... The only company that should be sued is Microsoft, for being the root cause of these lawsuits against hard drive makers.