Mark Gilbert’s Blog

Hard drive manufacturer Seagate have offered customer who bought their drives in the last 6 years a cash refund or free backup software. This comes in light of a lawsuit which they have settled in relation to hard drives coming with 7% less capacity then promised. Seagate use a decimal definition of a gigbyte, where 1GB equals 1 billion bytes, however computer operating systems instead report hard drive capacity using a binary definition of GB, where 1GB equals 1, 073, 741, 824 bytes. This was found by the court to be misleading and so Seagate have been ordered to pay back 5% of the total cost of the drive to consumers.This applies to anyone who bought a drive between March 22nd 2001 and September 26th 2007, although those who bought drives between January 1st 2006 and September 26th 2007 will only get free backup and recovery software instead of the money. To qualify the drive must have been bought in the U.S. and not be a drive bundled with other hardware or devices. You will need proof of purchase to fill in the online claims form and a seperate form must be filled for each drive you wish to claim for.This comes to you from Computer World.Cheers