Seagate Class Action Suit

[Crashmaxx]

I just received this in my Gmail. Seems people are suing Seagate claiming that their drives have 7% less capacity then claim. Wonder why that would be?:wink:


Settlement Claim Administrator <ClaimsAdministrator@rustconsulting.dm-4.com>

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.

[Dixon Bainbridge]

Same is applicable to every HDD company, surely.

[~LoKe]

Same is applicable to every HDD company, surely.

Indeed.

This lawsuit is ********. Seagate has always done well by me; I buy from them exclusively.

Yet another class action lawsuit so lawyers can get rich.

[Anessen]

That may be the case, but the figure quoted on the disk is misleading and it will continue to get worse as capacities increase.

[stalker145]

Same is applicable to every HDD company, surely.

And let's hope that this suit gets laughed out of court... or at least denied. It would be a horrible precedent to allow the suit of every HDD manufacturer out there just because people don't understand how computers work.


Indeed.

This lawsuit is ********. Seagate has always done well by me; I buy from them exclusively.

Yet another class action lawsuit so lawyers can get rich.

Absolutely true. Did everyone notice that the thousands (or more) of potential plaintiffs will receive a whopping $7 while the liars ^H^H^H^H^H lawyers, will receive almost $1.8 MILLION?!

Brilliance, I say. Thanks to God that there are these people protecting our interests...

[x0as]

:confused: Why pick on Seagate, every manufacturer does exactly the same.

[Paul820]

I have three 80Gb hitachi deskstar HD's in my desktop and they only give me 76Gb on each. I thought it was normal to get less than what was stated.

[dasunst3r]

Here's how to get the verdict overturned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

This set of measurement was established in 1998, which is a little bit before consumers started going whiskey tango foxtrot over hard disk capacities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541

[mattschulte]

Here's how to get the verdict overturned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

This set of measurement was established in 1998, which is a little bit before consumers started going whiskey tango foxtrot over hard disk capacities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541

Brilliant!

There is no way that they will win this lawsuit. It would set a horrible president that could do nothing but hurt the tech industry.

The worst part is that they won't win the lawsuit, but they will still get their money because it will be cheaper for Seagate to settle. Fracking lawyers!:mad:

[thx11381974]

Saying it's misleading is misleading, They where lying. Hopefully all drive makers will start telling the truth now.

[aaaantoine]

Brilliant!

There is no way that they will win this lawsuit. It would set a horrible president that could do nothing but hurt the tech industry.

The worst part is that they won't win the lawsuit, but they will still get their money because it will be cheaper for Seagate to settle. Fracking lawyers!:mad:

Say what you want about our president, but I believe the word you're looking for is precedent.

[tomintx]

If you are a member of this class (bought a Seagate HDD since 2001.) then you should write a letter objecting to the settlement.

Send it to both sets of lawyers.

Object to the settlement on the grounds that HDD capacity erosion is a well understood concept that has been around since the first HDD's were developed in the 60's. The statement that they want Seagate and others to publish is true, but the blackmail that they want to charge is just that.

I would hope that a lawyer could propose a letter to send. If you send a letter to both sets of lawyers stating that you object to the settlement, and would prefer that Suzy Cho and the lawyers get nothing from Seagate, that might cause the court to deny the settlement. But only if you can substantiate that you are a member of the class. Provide the SN's of whatever Seagate HDD's you might have.

Right now, there is a proposed settlement. It is the same as paying protection to the mob. Seagate would rather pay these lawyers $2M to go away, than face a California jury which might award a billion dollars to every customer. I say tell the lawyers involved to go someplace more southerly and a lot warmer...

I think that, if enough class members said "I have a brain, and I have purchased xx many retail disk drives from Seagate, and I made the purchase with the expectation that I would get a hit on reported capacity due to my OS formatting the drive. I was not harmed by Seagate in any way, and I object to any implication that I was. I will not accept any remuneration, and I object to a lawyer bringing this frivolous lawsuit purportedly on my behalf." then maybe we could get the court to toss this case out.

I would invite an attorney to rewrite the foregoing so that we can get a large number of these letters sent to the attorneys on both sides of this case.

[~LoKe]

Saying it's misleading is misleading, They where lying. Hopefully all drive makers will start telling the truth now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

[aaaantoine]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

++

The only ones lying are the application developers that don't adopt proper SI standards.

When Seagate and others say that their drive has a 120 GB capacity, they mean exactly what they're saying; their drive can store 120,000,000,000 bytes. The following subtracts from this number:

- All hard drives ship with X number of bad sectors that are automatically disabled in the testing process. The manufacturers already list this in their owner's manuals. Only when the number of bad sectors is above a certain point can the drive be considered defective, and then it probably wouldn't have shipped in the first place.
- When software companies display capacity and file size in kibibytes, mebibytes, etc, and fail to change the symbol accordingly. A 120 GB HDD is only 111.76 GiB, ya know.
- Other necessary factors such as file system formatting and the necessity to store partition data subtract from the total number.
- On OEM systems, a good chunk of space is used by a hidden partition that contains recovery data.

I think the class action lawyers have a case in general, but are targetting the wrong company. The greatest abuser of the MB/MiB discrepancy -- that I know of -- is Microsoft. I don't know if they fixed this in Vista yet, but it remains untouched in XP, and guess which OS has the greater market share.

[sr20ve]

What a joke.

[thx11381974]

If you go to the hardware store and buy 50 feet of rope. The clerk measures it out for you sometimes it's 50' 1" sometimes 51'. It's never 49' 11" the clerk always gives a little extra because if he didn't he'd feel he was cheating you. Buy 50 feet of rope that's prepackaged guess what it's just under 50'.There are reasons for this heat sealing the ends for instance.
It's funny how differently individuals and corporations treat their customers. It's also interesting how a person might reject the slightly under sized rope from the clerk but not the corporation .

[Ireclan]

I think that hard drives should come with a little extra space to make up for this discrepancy. In my opinion, this lawsuit is just.

[~LoKe]

I think that hard drives should come with a little extra space to make up for this discrepancy. In my opinion, this lawsuit is just.

A little extra space? It would change both capacities, not just one.

Your 320GB hard drive would become 340, and we'd have the same problem all over again.

[thx11381974]

I doubt they'd be sued for selling a 340 GB drive as a 320 GB. Consumers have an expectation that if a storage medium says it can hold 320GB that it actually can. You can come up with as many technical reasons as you like for why it won't, NO ONE CARES. When people go to buy a hard drive they shouldn't need calculator to know the real storage capacity. Drive manufacturers are lying maybe not from the point of an attorney, but from a commonsense point of their cheating the pubic.

[jgrabham]

An 80GB HDD is really 76GB - I thought that was common knowlege. Its always in the smallprint on the box (unless youre like me and just buy OEM drives lol)

[~LoKe]

I doubt they'd be sued for selling a 340 GB drive as a 320 GB.

They don't just make up these numbers. They're actually based on mathematic calculations. o_O

[thx11381974]

My truck's manufacturer list it's fuel capacity as 30 gallons. Really it holds 33 dodge only claims 30 because depending conditions when filled 33 can't always be achieved 30 can. Hard drive manufacturers are claiming capacity's that can never be reached.

[moshuptrail]

Guess what. This lawsuit is not about HD capacity. It's about another slick way to make lawyers (those of questionable ethic, not all lawyers are in this category) richer. Most of these class action lawsuits give the bulk of the winnings to the lawyers and the people who were "injured" by the defendant get barely enough to pay the postage.

I get stuff like this in the mail frequently. When you read the fine print about how much all the different parties get by joining the class, it's shocking. The lawyers get paid extremely well, but you get squat - usually cents on the dollar. But you need a pretext to create the class action lawsuit. False advertising HD capacity is as good as any.

So we can sit and argue about HD capacity, but the real winners will be the lawyers and the losers will be Seagate and the people who buy their products.

[wana10]

edit* forget my argument, i found all i posted was a restatement of the wiki article.

[thx11381974]

So we can sit and argue about HD capacity, but the real winners will be the lawyers and the losers will be Seagate and the people who buy their products.

Your totally right about the reason for the law suit, No argument from me. Although Seagate has been misrepresenting the capacity of their drives if the suit stops that then good. The people who singed on weren't expecting to get payed they were hoping to right a wrong.

Their's a similar law suit going on where truck drivers are suing because in the south east us where I live every time anyone fills their gas tank 6% of the fuel never ends up in the tank. This is because fuel expands and contracts with temperature, gas pumps are all set for a temp of 66 fahrenheit instead of 90. The truck drivers know they won't ever get a big payoff they just want to right a wrong & maybe not get robbed in the future.

[moshuptrail]

Good point. If you're going to become part of the class, don't do it for money. That would make you just like the lawyers, only a lot less rich! :)

[Beggar]

Arguing that HDD are always going to be smaller then advertised is completely irrelevant. The fact is, they advertise it as 80gb, but you get 76. Yeah, I know why. If I sold you 10 computers and gave you 9, wouldn't you be pissed? The idea isn't that the harddrives are defective, the point of the suit is that they are misrepresenting the actual capacity of their drives. While I think its a stupid thing to sue about, it is a valid complaint.

[moshuptrail]

Isn't the other 4Gb used for formating info?

That's like "overhead", isn't it, and may depend on what filesystem is used.

[Nekiruhs]

Arguing that HDD are always going to be smaller then advertised is completely irrelevant. The fact is, they advertise it as 80gb, but you get 76. Yeah, I know why. If I sold you 10 computers and gave you 9, wouldn't you be pissed? The idea isn't that the harddrives are defective, the point of the suit is that they are misrepresenting the actual capacity of their drives. While I think its a stupid thing to sue about, it is a valid complaint.
And this is why people should read the thread. An 80GB Hd can store 80,000,000,000 Bytes. Its just that some if it is in use (Formatting data, partition data, etc). HD capacity on your computer is measured in GiB or 1024 MiB not 1000 MB. Hard Drives are sold by MB. Case closed.

[jpkotta]

df -H

Boom! You got all your space back!

Sometimes I wish everyone used base 16 instead of base 10.

[Beggar]

And this is why people should read the thread. An 80GB Hd can store 80,000,000,000 Bytes. Its just that some if it is in use (Formatting data, partition data, etc). HD capacity on your computer is measured in GiB or 1024 MiB not 1000 MB. Hard Drives are sold by MB. Case closed.

And this is why stupid people should not open their mouths.

According to the press release: "Seagate stated that purchasers of the drives would receive approximately 7% more usable storage capacity than they actually received." Notice the word in bold? (thats the one thats darker then the others). The suit alleges that seagate is advertising more HD space then is usable.

Lets look at a random product (http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/pushbutton_backup/) sold by Seagate(the underline means its a link, click it). You will notice that what they are advertising is hard drives with a capacity of 200GB, etc. Now as we already know (you stated this yourself) the capacity is not actually going to be 200GB, it will be less than that. And according to the suit, that isn't cool.

As I previously stated, I agree that its a stupid thing to sue about, I agree that it is well known to the tech savvy that it is not actually going to give you whats advertised, 200gb of capacity. But no matter how you look at it, you do not get the capacity that they advertise in usable space. This seems to be the argument, since the suit seems to claim that Seagate is stating the 200gb is usable space. I see nowhere on their site where it clearly states you wont actually get all of this space (I didnt look real hard, I shouldn't have too), and so, the suit claims, Seagate is advertising this as usable space. Hmm, misadvertising what you are actually selling? That seems like it should be against the law... (http://www.enotes.com/everyday-law-encyclopedia/deceptive-trade-practices)

P.S. Case not closed, as the article clearly articulates, the case is just getting opened up.

[wana10]

Lets look at a random product (http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/pushbutton_backup/) sold by Seagate(the underline means its a link, click it). You will notice that what they are advertising is hard drives with a capacity of 200GB, etc. Now as we already know (you stated this yourself) the capacity is not actually going to be 200GB, it will be less than that. And according to the suit, that isn't cool.

here's 4 simple steps i'd like you to try before responding.
1) go to the link you posted
2) read either the product overview or data sheet provided on the page.
3) notice line that says
One gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity.
4) drop frivolous lawsuit

the os not conforming to si is not the hdd manufacturers problem.

[NIT006.5]

Brilliant!

There is no way that they will win this lawsuit. It would set a horrible president that could do nothing but hurt the tech industry.

The worst part is that they won't win the lawsuit, but they will still get their money because it will be cheaper for Seagate to settle. Fracking lawyers!:mad:

I agree. It's a load of !@#$.

[jinx099]

If you go to the hardware store and buy 50 feet of rope. The clerk measures it out for you sometimes it's 50' 1" sometimes 51'. It's never 49' 11" the clerk always gives a little extra because if he didn't he'd feel he was cheating you. Buy 50 feet of rope that's prepackaged guess what it's just under 50'.There are reasons for this heat sealing the ends for instance.
It's funny how differently individuals and corporations treat their customers. It's also interesting how a person might reject the slightly under sized rope from the clerk but not the corporation .

Would you be pissed if you ordered 3 yards of rope, and the clerk gave you 2.7432 meters of rope?

3 yards = 2.7432 meters

Thats what this whole "loss of HD capacity" thing is all about. HD manufacturers use different (but closely related) units for measuring capacity. All you moaning about losing space and calling manufacturers liars need to go back to your 4th grade science class.

[curuxz]

Sue the OS and the FAT people not the drive makers.

[synthaxx]

Sue the FAT people...

All of them?

:lolflag:

Sorry guys, couldn't resist.
You can get back to your "discussion" now.

[BoardDWorld]

This is funny, 2001 is about the time the Seagate factory opened up just up the road from my family home in Korat, Thailand. Seagate Singapore has since closed up completely and the factory here has just been getting bigger each year...

[Nunu]

This is like suing VW because your GTI doesn't really make your girlfriend take of her Panties against her will :D

[thx11381974]

What's so hard about reducing the claimed drive capacity by 7% ?

My God the world as we know it may come to an end!
Fire
Brimstone
The dead walk the Earth
A 100 foot tall Stay Puft Marshmallow Man attacks New York

I can't believe I didn't see it sooner! We have to start calling Seagate and demand they pull out of this insane deal with the Devil!

The very future of the human race depends on it!

[Beggar]

here's 4 simple steps i'd like you to try before responding.
1) go to the link you posted
2) read either the product overview or data sheet provided on the page.
3) notice line that says
4) drop frivolous lawsuit

the os not conforming to si is not the hdd manufacturers problem.

Except, "One gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity." You are not even getting 200 billion bytes of usable space. Thats the argument, as everyone else in this thread has stated/accepted, some of that space is used by the file system, etc.
The suit doesnt say your not getting those GB, it says your not getting that many GB of usable space. Come on I even bolded it for you last time I explained it...

I agree its retarded. But to a non-tech savvy person like my grandma, do they care about what OS they use? Do they care what file-system is on their computer? No, they just want it to work blindly for them. And in this case, it doesn't provide the service they advertise, at least thats how in looks to the non-tech smart people.

[aaaantoine]

Except, "One gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity." You are not even getting 200 billion bytes of usable space. Thats the argument, as everyone else in this thread has stated/accepted, some of that space is used by the file system, etc.
The suit doesnt say your not getting those GB, it says your not getting that many GB of usable space. Come on I even bolded it for you last time I explained it...

Space used by the file system will vary depending on which file system your drive uses. It would be impossible for hard drive manufacturers to compensate precisely for file system overhead, unless they just default to NTFS.

One impact this lawsuit might have is that manufacturers will start labeling their drives as, for example...

120GB
(111.76GiB)

But then it would still be up to software developers to use the right SI terminology.

[saulgoode]

Except, "One gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity." You are not even getting 200 billion bytes of usable space. Thats the argument, as everyone else in this thread has stated/accepted, some of that space is used by the file system, etc.

The lawsuit specifically cites the difference between binary and decimal interpretations of "giga" prefix.

Plaintiff claims that Seagate's use of the decimal definition of the storage capacity term "gigabyte" (or GB), whereby 1 GB = 109 (1 billion) bytes, misleads consumers because computer operating systems report hard drive capacity using a binary definition of GB, whereby 1 GB = 230 (1,073,741,824) bytes, a difference of approximately seven percent.


The suit doesnt say your not getting those GB, it says your not getting that many GB of usable space. Come on I even bolded it for you last time I explained it...

Usable means "able to be put to use" or "fit or ready for use or service". If data can be stored to and retrieved from the drive then it is usable. You can "use" every byte on the harddrive regardless of filesystem (check out the 'dd' command). It is not Seagate's responsibility to dictate how efficiently you "use" their storage.

[sr20ve]

This is the same thing car manufacturers do when they give you the horsepower rating of a car.

You can measure horsepower is serveral different ways. You can rate the hp at the flywheel or at the wheels. There is a 15% loss in power conversion from the flywheel to the wheels. So, even though the wheel rating is more acurate, because that's what you're actually getting, they always advertise the flywheel rating because it's a larger number.

Has anybody tried suing car companies for this?

[wana10]

there is another line on seagate's spec sheets saying formatted size may be less...its not a companies problem if consumers don't read the boxes.
and 2^30, or 1,073,741,824, is a gibibyte...not a gigabyte.

[thx11381974]

Look they lost or at least they settled. Seagate's scumbag lawyers looked at the case and decided they couldn't win. Here's why, the way Seagate has been rating it's drive capacity is based on a technical method that requires the buyer to understand how their drive works. The general pubic doesn't know or care how the drive works, they only want to know what they can put in it. All drive makers have to do is reduce their claimed capacity by 7% and what they printed on the box would meet customer expectations. Yesterday I asked a friend who just bough a pc from Walmart. What his drive capacity was. He replied "250 GB" I pointed out No that's just what they put on the box after formating it's about 20 gb less. His response was "that's just wrong".

[jinx099]

Look they lost or at least they settled. Seagate's scumbag lawyers looked at the case and decided they couldn't win. Here's why, the way Seagate has been rating it's drive capacity is based on a technical method that requires the buyer to understand how their drive works. The general pubic doesn't know or care how the drive works, they only want to know what they can put in it. All drive makers have to do is reduce their claimed capacity by 7% and what they printed on the box would meet customer expectations. Yesterday I asked a friend who just bough a pc from Walmart. What his drive capacity was. He replied "250 GB" I pointed out No that's just what they put on the box after formating it's about 20 gb less. His response was "that's just wrong".

Actually, you are wrong. See my previous post.

[saulgoode]

Look they lost or at least they settled.

Do you have a source for this? The site referenced in the original post declares it as "a proposed class action settlement" and I see nothing that indicates Seagate's accession.

[thx11381974]

My bad so unless the lawyers who are suing Seagate reject it they've settled

[saulgoode]

Maybe there should be a class action suit against the class action suit lawyers because people misinterpret what they are stating? :)

[jinx099]

The whole lawsuit is about people misinterpreting what they read.

I really hope Seagate doesn't have to pay a dime. Every single HD manufacturer lists the capacity the same way, why is Seagate being singled out? Seagate makes great drives and I don't want to have to pay more for one next time I buy.

[thx11381974]

It sounds like their going to lose few million, but a lot less than it would have cost them fight the suit.
Your right the suit was about people misinterpreting what they read, a misinterpretation Seagate had to be aware of and could've easily fixed.
I don't think Seagate was singled out in as much as they were just unlucky enough to be first. If the other manufacturers don't correct the mispreception they too will be sued.
Really Seagate could turn this whole thing to their advantage by starting advertise that there drives really hold what they say they do. unlike their competitors who are trying to trick you.

[jpkotta]

<rant>
But nothing is wrong! If all HDs are measured in SI GB (and they are, AFAIK), there is no confusion when comparing drives to buy. If all OSes measure capacity in GiB (and they do, AFAIK), there is no confusion of installed drives. And things have been this way since the dawn of PCs.

If you're the kind of person who actually needs to budget their storage capacity, then you damn sure better know the difference. Seriously, you can figure out that you need SATA vs. PATA but you don't know how to convert the units?

It's the damn lawyers again. They're probably cooking up a scheme to sue Intel for selling slower chips at a higher price, because P4s had higher clock speeds than Cores.
</rant>

[stalker145]

I can't friggin' believe the idiocy... Seagate caved (http://www.apcmag.com/7449/seagate_offers_cash_to_customers_for_missing_megab ytes).

[Dimitriid]

I can't friggin' believe the idiocy... Seagate caved (http://www.apcmag.com/7449/seagate_offers_cash_to_customers_for_missing_megab ytes).

To quote a great movie:


JACK (V.O.)
Take the number of vehicles in the
field, (A), and multiply it by the
probable rate of failure, (B), then
multiply the result by the average
out-of-court settlement, (C). A
times B times C equals X...

If X is less than the cost of a
recall, we don't do one.

[southernman]

I can't friggin' believe the idiocy... Seagate caved (http://www.apcmag.com/7449/seagate_offers_cash_to_customers_for_missing_megab ytes).On the other hand, it's more beneficial to Seagate than anyone.

It's a very good brand, and the exposure will make them a mint.

If I were from other than the US, I'd have a little reason to cry foul, perhaps.