We don’t normally discuss class action lawsuits here on the Gear, mostly because we’re not fond of fostering the idea that lawyers can do good. In this case, however, you’re very possibly due for a bate for 5% from Seagate, if you’ve purchased one of its harddrives in the last six years. That’s enough money to get you most of the way to the Transformers DVD.
At the center of the suit is what constitutes a gigabyte. In my G5 that I’m typing this on, I have a 150GB HDD. That’s really a misnomer, however, as it really has 160,041,885,696 bytes. The reason for this disparity is that a gigabyte is really 1,024 megabytes, which are each 1,024 kilobytes, and so on. Those extra 24s add up, but to keep it simple, harddrive manufacturers round down or, as is the issue here, round up to the nearest value.
Honestly, we think that Seagate has done no wrong. There was no deception involved, and anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of computers probably wouldn’t take issue. But if you feel that you’ve been wronged by the way the math works, by all means sign up for your $12.50.
Seagate pays out over gigabyte definition [ZDnet UK]
Except when talking about bandwidth, in which case a Gb is 1,000 Mb. But who really cares? (Other than, apparently, class action lawyers).
Heh. Yes, hans, but we’re not even going to go there. That’s a whole different can of poo.
giga = 10^9
mega = 10^6
kilo = 10^3
These definitions are domain-independent and much older than any computer. There are international standards for this. The so-called harddrive vendor conspiracy is an urban legend. HDDs were always sold using the correct meanings of megabyte and gigabyte, same goes for DVDs, tapes, BluRay disks. Likewise, 1 Mbit is 1000000 bit, 1 kHz is 1000 Hz. The use of K (pronounced kay not kilo) as 1024 was always meant as an approximation and used for convenience in low-level programming but it’s completely irrelevant for high-level use and especially for end-users.
In the US legal system, every party has to pay for their costs. So even if you are innocent, you might end up with a huge bill especially as lawyer costs are calculated depending on what’s at stake. So it’s often economically smart to give in and pay some peanuts instead of risking the increased costs. Also in this case, Seagate would clearly suffer by winning the case unless they pay the losers bill too. Just to repeat, they did not lose the case, there was no decision by any judge, Seagate agreed to a settlement. It’s pretty unfair anyway because Seagate does not label their disks any different than any other vendors like IBM, Western Digital, Hitachi, Samsung etc. and to repeat all of them label disks correctly. Sue Microsoft, Apple and whoever if you have a problem with their software displaying incorrect information.
manu’s like seagate and western digital use /1000 (aka Scientific) rates when calculating 1 GB. This is because they are insane, but all other media has always been like this due to the fact that not all system’s use /1024 as a standard depending on the FS. IMO i think its safe to stop the BS and use /1024 screw the “scientific” numbering
Let’s make a deal: As soon as bullshit gets you to the moon, we can safely scrap the nonsense called science.