New York, NY: (Nov-01-07) Michael Lazar and Sarah Cho brought a class action lawsuit against Seagate Technology, alleging that they purchased Seagate hard drives in the US which had 7% less storage capacity than what the vendor promised. Cho claimed that Seagate's use of the decimal definition of the storage capacity term "gigabyte" (GB) whereby 1 GB equals 1 billion bytes, was misleading to consumers because computer operating systems instead report hard drive capacity using a binary definition of GB, whereby 1 GB equals 1, 073, 741, 824 bytes, a difference of approximately 7% from Seagate's figures.
The suit, which has been fought for six years, reached a settlement when the company agreed to provide a cash refund or free backup and recovery software to its customers. Records showed that between March 22, 2001, and March 31, 2007, the disk drive maker sold approximately 6.2 million retail hard drives in the US. Once the settlement is approved, anyone who bought a Seagate brand hard disk drive between March 22, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2006, has the right to submit a claim for cash or software from Seagate by March 10, 2008. Court documents stated that money returned by Seagate toward settlement class members will be the equivalent to 5% of the net amount paid for the Seagate hard drives, excluding taxes or rebates. [
