Cho v. Seagate Technology (US) Holdings, Inc.

[Darth_Nader]

Dear Settlement Class Member,

Your claim in the Cho v. Seagate Technology (US) Holdings, Inc. Settlement has been approved and you may download your free backup and recovery software by following the directions below.

Case No.: CGC-06-453195
SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA
COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO

You have reached the Seagate Hard Drive Settlement Benefit Download Website.

The Seagate Software Suite features several backup and recovery-related programs within an integrated software framework. Please enter your benefit code below and then click the Redeem Benefit Code button to be redirected to the download page.

Should I bother?

[astro]

The lawsuit was so asinine I can’t believe they settled. Looks like there is a cash benefit available also.

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/13455

As part of a settlement in the Cho vs. Seagate Technology case, a fairly large number of Seagate hard drive users are eligible for cash back and free software. DailyTech reports that the settlement applies to users who purchased Seagate hard drives between March 22, 2001 and September 26, 2007. Those users can either opt for a cash sum, which adds up to 5% of the cost of the hard drive they purchased, or a free copy of the Seagate Software suite, which normally costs $40. A little paperwork is required, however: a mail-in form for the cash settlement is available on this page on the settlement website, and those looking to get free software instead will need to fill out this form instead.

At the heart of the Cho vs. Seagate case is the controversy between the way hard drive makers quantify megabytes and gigabytes and the way modern operating systems do. In hard drive maker terms, a gigabyte is 109 (1 billion) bytes, but Windows, Mac OS, and most other operating systems define a gigabyte as 230 (1,073,741,824) bytes. That results in discrepancies between rated hard drive capacities and available formatted space, which led to Cho’s lawsuit accusing Seagate of false advertising

[Darth_Nader]

5% of the cost of a hard drive I can’t recall owning maybe five years ago, or a free $40 dumpware package.

wh00t!

Remember when it was a big deal that the CRT 13" displays turned out to only really be 12.7" or so?

THHHRRRBBPPTT!

[/me releases a Bill the Cat fart…]

[Gukumatz]

That’s ridiculous - Windows and Mac (Until Snow Leopard) were the ones who weren’t adhering to the standard, not Seagate. The Official definition of a gigabyte is 10^9, not 2^30 (a “gibibyte”).

As for the settlement, go for the cash.

[mhendo]

@Darth_Nader

Should I bother?

From the settlement website:

To receive the software or the cash payment, you must submit a claim form available at www.harddrive-settlement.com by July 9, 2010.

[Darth_Nader]

Apparently, I did.

[mhendo]

Oops. I didn’t notice that you had submitted your claim

I’m not quite sure, though, why you would go to the trouble of submitting the claim in the first place, and then come here and ask if you should bother to download the piece of free software that you get for submitting the claim. Seems to me that the time to decide whether you wanted it or not was before jumping through all the claim hoops.

[Cerowyn]

@Gukumatz

That’s ridiculous - Windows and Mac (Until Snow Leopard) were the ones who weren’t adhering to the standard, not Seagate. The Official definition of a gigabyte is 10^9, not 2^30 (a “gibibyte”).

As for the settlement, go for the cash.

The “official” definition for gigabyte, as an industry term (IEEE), was exactly how Windows and Mac OS used it. Memory has always been measured using the JEDEC standard (e.g., a gigabyte is 2[sup]30[/sup] bytes), as were removable magnetic media. All of the major hard drive manufacturers produced removeable media products that used those standards. They adopted a non-industry usage in order to make their hard drive products seem larger than they were, while simultaneously using the more accepted standard in their removeable products.

In 2000, the IEEE changed their official definition to comply with the SI standard, and the “gigibyte” was established some years later as a way of clearing up the confusion.