Western Digital Settlement

L

Lamont Cranston

Gawd
Joined
Mar 24, 2006
Messages
846
So now that the Western Digital lawsuit is settled, anyone know what that software from them is going to do? Will my 74 gb raptor actually read 74 gb instead of 69? also am I going to have to reformat and reinstall to gain that extra space?
 
mind elaborating? maybe a link to what you are talking about? please don't tell me that some <expletive> sued WD because his 74,000,000,000 Bytes are not 74 GibiBytes and won? Especially since it says so on the friggin box.
 
drizzt81 said:
mind elaborating? maybe a link to what you are talking about? please don't tell me that some <expletive> sued WD because his 74,000,000,000 Bytes are not 74 GibiBytes and won? Especially since it says so on the friggin box.
Click to expand...

Actually, I think Hitachi and Seagate are the only manufacturers which state on the box that they measure a megabite as one million and not by the standard.
Frankly, they all need to be sued and forced into a settlement where they follow the goddamn standard instead of this million-bytes bullshit.
 
hey wow thanks for the link, I got in for the software.

It does kind of suck when you buy a 300gb drive and once you format it you have more like 274gb to work with.
 
So yeah, I just put in a claim for my 250gigger, can I also put in another one for my 160? I also plan on getting 2x320s (WD3200KS) from ZZF soon, should i clam them as well? What will this software do? As stated before, will it give me my full 320/250/160 GB? or is that a hardware/platter issue?
 
DangerIsGo said:
So yeah, I just put in a claim for my 250gigger, can I also put in another one for my 160? I also plan on getting 2x320s (WD3200KS) from ZZF soon, should i clam them as well? What will this software do? As stated before, will it give me my full 320/250/160 GB? or is that a hardware/platter issue?
Click to expand...

It's an issue of what I consider deceptive labelling.
All hard drive manufacturers since the dawn of time have labeled one megabyte as one million bytes. This is not the standard, and is actually physically impossible with a 512 byte sector size. It's a deceptive practice they use to basically uprate the drives. The obvious thing being that as drive size increases, the difference between claimed and real capacity becomes greater and greater.
A megabyte is actually 1,048,576 bytes. A Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB 16MB claims to have 750GB, or 750,000,000,000 bytes. This actually works out to 715,255MB or 715.25GB - a difference of 34.75GB from the claimed capacity.

You'll never get honest labelling out of them unless a court forces it. As to what this software does, I couldn't tell you for sure, I don't intend to install it. For all I know, it's cruddy compression software (Doublespace flashbacks, anyone?), but the description seems to indicate that it's crappy backup software so you can waste a bunch of CD-Rs making backups.
 
DangerIsGo said:
What will this software do??
Click to expand...

From the settlement agreement.

Class Members who successfully complete the Claim Form prior to the expiration of the Claim Period shall be entitled to download, from the Website, Software with substantially all of the following capabilities and features: data back up; data recovery; a user interface to guide users through each step of the backup and recovery process; ability to execute operations in the background and create full backups without impacting users, applications, or the network; capability to schedule backup scripts and jobs as needed; built-in file filters that allow users to choose which files they want to include or exclude in the back-up; copy files in native file format; restore files/folders from a backup; ability to backup entire system into a backup set, which can be appended at a later date; capability of creating a single or multiple file backup set which the user can compress or encrypt for added security; progressive backup method which only copies new or modified files and allows user to restore their machine to any point in time with a single pass; choice of full, incremental, and mirror backups; ability to duplicate data, including all necessary system files to a secondary hard disk drive’s root level to make a bootable disk; fully scriptable on Windows and Macintosh so that a user can create scripts that force certain applications to close when the backup runs and re-open when completed; if unable to backup an individual file, intelligence to retry that file on the next operation until properly backed up; built-in schedulers that allow users to create automated back-up, duplicate, and restore scripts to meet their needs; detailed log reporting; option of backing up to a disk; protection to ensure that backups do not exceed disk capacity; notification to users regarding successful backups, failed backups, and other relevant information; built-in software compression; encryption algorithm; password protection; data grooming options for disk backup sets; restore option to replace existing files on hard drives only if the backed up files are newer; restore option to restore only files which exist in the backup but have been deleted from the hard drives; duplicate option to replace existing files on hard drives only if the copy on the source disk is newer; selectors for Documents and Settings, Office Documents, Music, Movies, Pictures, Operating System, and Applications; DVD+R DL (double layer) drives and media support; taskbar Icon and hot key backup; catalog files automatically repaired when they become out of sync; supports the following Windows operation systems: Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, XP Pro and Home, NT 4, and Win XP 64-bit OS; supports the following Macintosh operation systems: Mac OS 10.1.5 and later; localized in the following languages: English, French, German, and Japanese; supports local, external, removable, and network hard disk regardless of interface; capable of being saved and re-used by Class Members.
 
I love the settlement terms: we get cruddy software and:

Besides buying the software for consumers, Western Digital has agreed to pay $500,000 in fees and expenses to San Francisco lawyers Adam Gutride and Seth Safier, who filed the suit last year.
Click to expand...

The lawyers get the money.
 
so basically then, we arent getting any more drive space, we are just getting a $30 backup utility for free.....gee now i see why they took the settlement before they really had to do something or pay real money for the issue
 
SonicTron said:
hey wow thanks for the link, I got in for the software.

It does kind of suck when you buy a 300gb drive and once you format it you have more like 274gb to work with.
Click to expand...
has nothing to do with formatting.
 
Anyone know if any other companies are currently being sued for this other than seagate. I got a Samsung, 160gb of course it read 149gb. That's almost 7%!!! I also got a Maxtor 80gb, which reads like 76.4gb. I think maxtor got bought or something, I can't remember. It just sucks when companies deceive consumers and the only way to get anything done is by getting the law involved. So much for customer satisfaction and doing it on your own.
 
santaliqueur said:
has nothing to do with formatting.
Click to expand...

Sure it does. All my hard disks report the full space, my 40gb reports as 39.99 gb, my 160 reports as 160.1, my 200 reports as 201gb, etc...

but formatted they are not capable of storing that much personal data
 
SonicTron said:
Sure it does. All my hard disks report the full space, my 40gb reports as 39.99 gb, my 160 reports as 160.1, my 200 reports as 201gb, etc...

but formatted they are not capable of storing that much personal data
Click to expand...
frankly, they can. They are able to store 39.99 * 10^9 Bytes. That you'd rather have it be 39.99 * (1024)^3 Bytes is an entirely different point. If you wrote a Filesystem that worked on Mega and Gigabytes as 10^6 and 10^9 bytes respectively, it should give you the space you desire.
 
drizzt81 said:
frankly, they can. They are able to store 39.99 * 10^9 Bytes. That you'd rather have it be 39.99 * (1024)^3 Bytes is an entirely different point. If you wrote a Filesystem that worked on Mega and Gigabytes as 10^6 and 10^9 bytes respectively, it should give you the space you desire.
Click to expand...

Of course, then your drive would be approximately 10% as fast as it is now, because you'd have sector misalignment on every single block. (Sectors are 512 bytes.)
 
People need an education on ethics, and the SI system.

SI:
Mega == 1 x 10^6
Giga == 1 x 10^9

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

Popular use does not mean Proper use, and should not mean that people can settle a class action lawsuit over it.

A dozen failed hard drives to anyone who claims.
 
I find it bizarre that the entire industry doesnt use powers of 2 for all data. According to the wiki article, telecommunications, which i assume is network and internet speeds, also suffers from the SI standard. Sounds like someone who didn't know computer science, or wanted to market things to sound better got thrown in there. I mean, if everything is written in binary, and any file you deal with will be marked as 2^10 for kila, 2^20, for mega and so on. Why would hdd manufactures, or any device that deals with electronic data, storage or transfer, not go by this standard. I think CPUs are the only thing computer related that it would be ok to go by SI standard.
 
mwarps said:
People need an education on ethics, and the SI system.

SI:
Mega == 1 x 10^6
Giga == 1 x 10^9

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

Popular use does not mean Proper use, and should not mean that people can settle a class action lawsuit over it.

A dozen failed hard drives to anyone who claims.
Click to expand...

This is about false advertising and marketing... nothing more.
 
This sucks.. I expected something better (yeah right). All it is is a backup software so you dont have to waste space on your HDD's. You backup your stuff onto CD/DVD's which then in turn frees up space. What a friggen jip.
 
Stellar said:
This is about false advertising and marketing... nothing more.
Click to expand...
i am not a very old person, so maybe someone else can correct me. I was under the impression that the Mega = 10^6 Bytes deal has been going on for a long time now. I don't see how it 'suddenly' becomes false advertisement, just because Joe Schmoe buys a harddrive and not people that have a clue.

I guess it's time we sue Intel/ AMD, since my 2.0GHz computer is actually 2.0 * 10^9Hz and not 2.0 * (1024)^3 Hz.
 
It's been going on as long as I remember, and my oldest hard drive is 20 MB from the mid 1980's. Sure it sucks but that's the way it is. I know before hand when I buy a drive, about 5% will be lost to formatting and always have, so I accept this as the way it is.

And whoopdeedoo for the lawsuit against WD, hope those lawyers like their new houses, and again the consumers lost.
 
drizzt81 said:
I guess it's time we sue Intel/ AMD, since my 2.0GHz computer is actually 2.0 * 10^9Hz and not 2.0 * (1024)^3 Hz.
Click to expand...
Well maybe AMD because of their BS marketing scheme:
AMD Athlon + 3200 = 2.2Ghz. :rolleyes:

I totally disagree with that. Anyone not in "the know" would think WOW A 3.2 Gigahertz AMD!

Anyways, back on topic.
 
DangerIsGo said:
All it is is a backup software so you dont have to waste space on your HDD's. You backup your stuff onto CD/DVD's which then in turn frees up space.
Click to expand...


This pretty much sums up what i was wondering, interesting to see everyone's different take on it!!
 
Puterguru said:
Well maybe AMD because of their BS marketing scheme:
AMD Athlon + 3200 = 2.2Ghz. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

That's a PR rating, not advertised as being that speed.
 
Originally Posted by Puterguru:
Well maybe AMD because of their BS marketing scheme.
AMD Athlon + 3200 = 2.2Ghz.
Click to expand...

Actually from selling computers retail, consumers really had no idea what that meant, unless they knew a thing or two about computers. And not really misleading as it says 3200+ not 3.2 ghz. While an 80GB HDD isn't 80GB in the same terms that any computer file or application will refer to it as. However, my view on this topic is yes, these lawyers win and consumers lose. Has this been going on for a long time, yes, but now its getting to where the percentage of storage you thought you were going to get is even greater. (The percentage goes up every prefix.) Do I think WDD should have been sued over this, probably not, but it is a bad practice that I believe should stop, even though they are technically not lying, just misleading.

Oh and if you want to talk about marketing in CPUs, talk about NetBurst. Marketing drove that architecture. :D

Originally Posted by drizzt81:
I guess it's time we sue Intel/ AMD, since my 2.0GHz computer is actually 2.0 * 10^9Hz and not 2.0 * (1024)^3 Hz.
Click to expand...

The concept doesn't apply to CPUs as cycles aren't binary. One hertz is one cycle. While 1 byte is 8 bits. 1 bit is 1 or 0. See, its binary.
 
It has to do with the general stupidity of the population who improperly applies scientific names and notations to the wrong numbers in computers.

For what it is worth a Kilo of anything has been 1000 for many more years than computers have exisited.. Only when some idiot got lazy and called 1024 a Kilo did this problem start to happen.. it only got worse with Giga and larger numbers.

Your stupidity is not the HD mfg's fault.

Edit: Eg, when you are walking 1 KPH (very slow) you are walking 1000 meters in an hour, not 1024 meters in an hour.. The names predate computers and were improperly applied to binary "close enough" numbers as a result of lazyness.

-Lazn
 
They should still label it on their HDD's that they measure their HDD's space in SI standard, vs the normal use in computers as to avoid confusion. I have never once thought of a gigabyte as 1billion bytes, only as 2^30 bytes, except for when i was a child. Now if anyone who studies copmuters, knows this and believes this, and everything is created in response to this. Then maybe it's the people who are creating the software that are causing the problem. Damn them.
 
Nooo, our stupidity has nothing to do with WD and Seagate rating and advertising the capacity of their drives in gigabytes when the capacity is actually in gibibytes.

That's a 10% loss from the consumer perspective. The average consumer does not, and is not obligated to, know the difference between a giga and a gibibyte. If the box says 300 Gigabytes, the drive should give you 300 Gigabytes of storage.. period, end of story.
 
Stellar said:
Nooo, our stupidity has nothing to do with WD and Seagate rating and advertising the capacity of their drives in gigabytes when the capacity is actually in gibibytes.

That's a 10% loss from the consumer perspective. The average consumer does not, and is not obligated to, know the difference between a giga and a gibibyte. If the box says 300 Gigabytes, the drive should give you 300 Gigabytes of storage.. period, end of story.
Click to expand...

Umm that is just it, it does have 300 Gigabytes, you just don't know what 300 Gigabytes really is.

==>Lazn
 
Lazn_Work said:
Edit: Eg, when you are walking 1 KPH (very slow) you are walking 1000 meters in an hour, not 1024 meters in an hour.. The names predate computers and were improperly applied to binary "close enough" numbers as a result of lazyness.

-Lazn
Click to expand...

I understand that, and I agree that it's crappy that this problem resulted in a lawsuit. But there is an exception with computers, that is accepted and commonly used, that kila is 1024. Applies to memory and probably will for a long time from now. Honestly, I don't think people care how it is represented. They just want 1GB reported on a HDD to read the same on the computer. Which is doesn't. If file systems start displaying information as 10^6 for giga, then no problem. But it doesn't and companies should account for this.
 
Stellar said:
Nooo, our stupidity has nothing to do with WD and Seagate rating and advertising the capacity of their drives in gigabytes when the capacity is actually in gibibytes.
Click to expand...

I don't believe the use of gibi, kibi, etc for prefixes for binary information was even standardized until like 1999. The problem apparently started before that, so consumers have been getting duped before specific binary prefixes were created. Even so, they aren't used so they don't have much meaning. This wiki article will clear some things up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibi
 
Lazn_Work said:
Umm that is just it, it does have 300 Gigabytes, you just don't know what 300 Gigabytes really is.

==>Lazn
Click to expand...

If a hard drive is to be formatted and accessed by an operating system, they should use the same standard to measure capacity as those operating systems.

It's a little assanine to call a drive a 300 Gigabyte drive if in point of fact it can't store 300 Gigabytes of data in the form that the data itself defines is 300 Gigabytes.

The lawsuit is valid, Western Digital needs to, at the very least, inform consumers of the discrepencies between their standards of measurement, and the standards of measurement that will actually be used by the software the customer will place on the drive to make it usable.
 
NUTSHELL TIME!

Hard drive manufacturers have, since at least 1988, measured a 'megabyte' as one million bytes. Since 1988, they have included a little line which says "we measure a megabyte as one million bytes." This has served as a basically bullshit disclaimer of liability for their mislabelling.
Fast forwards to today. Some manufacturers (Hitachi and Seagate) state on the retail packaging that they measure a megabyte as one million bytes. WDC does not, last I checked. WDC instead, includes this information in a 6 point font or smaller inside the instruction manual, well buried.
NONE of them include this information for drives purchased OEM or with systems, and it is the responsibility of the system builder to say 'oh, by the way, the guys who make the hard drives measure 'em totally different.'

The end result of all of this is a nearly two decade precedent for the manufacturers to basically mislabel and uprate their drives. The fact of the matter is that it is unquestionably false and deceptive advertizing, even with the disclaimer.

The origin of the practice is mostly marketing; 1 million bytes is easier to say than 1,048,576 bytes. Also, 80MB is much easier and nicer than 76.293945MB, isn't it? The problem is that those numbers get bigger and bigger.

Now most of you probably aren't old enough to remember, but 3.5" floppy disks used to be labeled as "2.0MB." That's their unformatted capacity. Well, that was deceptive as hell, and they basically ended up being forced to state that they were 1.44MB "Formatted Capacity." The hard drive manufacturers in the meantime, gleefully overstate capacity time and time again, and now you have a rather significant difference - over 34GB on a 750GB drive. That's a LOT of data.

Is it going to change? Seagate sure as hell doesn't want to have to say '715GB,' and they'll use loopholes like test-only filesystems to show that the drive can hold 750GB. So probably not any time soon.

In the meantime, WDC is laughing all the way to the bank on this one.
 
This is indeed false advertising, and I don't know why it's even in question.

Truth is, 1,000 MB DOES NOT equal a gigabyte, and manufacturers know this.

If they're going to advertise a drive as holding 250GB, then godammit, it needs to hold 250Gb, not 232GB.

The four hard drives in the two rigs in front of me were advertised as 250GB, 320GB, 320GB, and 160GB; however, they are actually 232GB, 298GB, 298GB, and 149GB.

That's a combined difference of 73GB.

Either manufacturers need to state that they measure capacity differently, or they need to add some more space so that the drive really holds what it says on the box.
 
AreEss said:
NUTSHELL TIME!
Click to expand...
indeed!
AreEss said:
Hard drive manufacturers have, since at least 1988, measured a 'megabyte' as one million bytes. Since 1988, they have included a little line which says "we measure a megabyte as one million bytes." This has served as a basically bullshit disclaimer of liability for their mislabelling.
Click to expand...

And rightfully so. The US. National Institute for Science and Technology says:
Code: 
Table 5.  SI prefixes 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Factor  Name  Symbol 
10^24   yotta   Y 
10^21   zetta   Z 
10^18   exa     E 
10^15   peta    P 
10^12   tera    T 
10^9    giga    G 
10^6    mega    M 
10^3    kilo    k

So a GigaByte is constructed from the SI-prefix Giga and the unit Byte. Which means that it is 10^9 Bytes.
 
tdg said:
That's a PR rating, not advertised as being that speed.
Click to expand...
I understand that, you understand that but does the uninformed customer know this? It's no different than this WD Settlement.

Customer: What size hard drive does this computer come with?
Sales person: 80 Gigs mam
Customer gets home and sees that its only at 74.

Customer: What processor does this computer come with?
Sales person: AMD 3200 mam.

Without additional knowledge or asking additional questions the customer believes they are getting a 3.2 gigahertz. AMD are the ones who came up with this PR rating.

Anyways, there was a BIG STINK about this when AMD first started doing this. I'm sure theres a couple hundred threads about it. So I'll move on. I'm just saying its the same type of problem.

Is it the customers fault for not being knowledgable, yes. Is it misleading to the customer who isn't knowledgable, yes.
 
Stellar said:
If a hard drive is to be formatted and accessed by an operating system, they should use the same standard to measure capacity as those operating systems.

It's a little assanine to call a drive a 300 Gigabyte drive if in point of fact it can't store 300 Gigabytes of data in the form that the data itself defines is 300 Gigabytes.

The lawsuit is valid, Western Digital needs to, at the very least, inform consumers of the discrepencies between their standards of measurement, and the standards of measurement that will actually be used by the software the customer will place on the drive to make it usable.
Click to expand...

So if you decide to call however much gas fits in your fuel tank one gallon, and you teach all your kids that a full tank of gas is one gallon, then your kids sue the oil companies because when they fill the gas tank it takes 20 gallons of gas it is the fault of the oil company?

==>Lazn
 
Lazn_Work said:
So if you decide to call however much gas fits in your fuel tank one gallon, and you teach all your kids that a full tank of gas is one gallon, then your kids sue the oil companies because when they fill the gas tank it takes 20 gallons of gas it is the fault of the oil company?

==>Lazn
Click to expand...

That's a horribly incorrect analogy.

Here is a better one.

GM decides to build fuel tanks for cars based on a standard of 1.5L = gallon.

You the consumer then go to fill up your vehicle at any number of various fuel stations, and it does not hold the amount of gallons that GM claims, because FUEL COMPANIES have already established that 2L = gallon.

It is not the responsibility of the consumer to discern the discrepencies between standards in every industry of product that they consume. These discrepencies either should not exist, or should be CLEARLY advertised to the customer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top