RSSWestern Digital Settles Capacity Suit
By Nate Mook | Published June 28, 2006, 12:04 PM
Western Digital will provide free backup software to around 1 million customers as part of a class action settlement relating to how the company marketed the size of its hard drives. Western Digital was sued last year for advertising a drive as 80GB when it only physically stored 74.4GB.
The capacity difference is caused by computers using a binary system that defines 1GB as 1,073,741,824 bytes. Western Digital labeled its hard drives using a decimal definition in which 1GB was 1,000,000,000 bytes. The lawsuit alleged that the disk maker misled customers and violated the California Consumers Legal Remedies Act.
Any person or entity who purchased a Western Digital hard drive from March 22, 2001 to February 15, 2006 is eligible to receive a free copy of the backup software, which has been valued at $30.00. The software product to be offered was not specified, but it will work on both Windows and Mac OS X.
To receive the software, customers must file claims by July 16 on the Western Digital Web site.
The settlement, approved by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernard Zimmerman in San Francisco this month, also calls for Western Digital to add a disclaimer on its products noting that usable storage space may differ from advertised capacity. Most hard drive makers have a similar warning on their retail packaging.
San Francisco lawyers Adam Gutride and Seth Safier will receive attorneys’ fees of up to $485,000 and expenses up to $15,000 for their work in the case, pending approval of the proposal. The pair has also filed a similar lawsuit against Seagate Technology.
i'm sure it's in most dictionary's under prefix's, found this online http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix.
kilo = x1000
mega = x1,000,000
giga = x1,000,000,000
works for more than just bits and bytes
(it's the formating that changes it)
sad to see WD give in
:-(
gonna make it easier for similar lawsuits
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|Ah, finally some action taken. This has irritated me for years. Companies knew damn well what they were doing trying to scam people off into thinking they were getting more than they actually were.
Of course when you get 256MB of ram, or a 256MB graphics card, it has to be the 8bits -> 1 byte, 1024 bytes -> 1 kilobyte, 1024 kilobyte -> 1 Megabyte ratio.
For HDs, and recording media it suited them well to change their mind on what MB was going to mean, making it sound like a better deal for our money. Personally, I hope the rest who've done this over the years get sued as well.
It is great for the lawyers, they'll get all the money, etc. But I really don't care. I just want companies to stop blatently lying, ie by changing what a MB represents, when it suits :)
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|And the winner for this weeks frivolous lawsuit is....."Adam Gutride and Seth Safier"
With a grand prize of $500,000.00.
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|While the consumers get some probably not very useful $30 backup software, while people here spend so much time arguing about definition of kilobytes, and while so much time and effort have been wasted over this lawsuit, the real winners are the lawyers; again; as always!
Something is not right...
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|"The settlement, approved by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernard Zimmerman in San Francisco this month..."
Not against the city--but just look up that Judge's name in google. Look at his history. He's a loon, and that is the nicest word I have for him. I hope he finds me and tries to sue me for slander now, cause I'm up for a fight against this anti-American Judge.
Back to the issue--SINCE 1987, ALL HARD DRIVE MANUFACTURERS HAVE LABELED HARD DRIVES THIS WAY, AS WELL AS FLOPPY DISK COMPANIES! How come a floppy disk is only 1.38MB, NOT 1.44MB? Binary. How is this even an issue? Western Digital should have appealed on principle, but granted, it would have cost more than this "easy way out".
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|The floppy drive industry was even more confusing than the hard drive instrusty:
The original 160 KB, 320 KB and 360 KB 5.25" floppy disks used on PC's used KB to mean 1024 bytes.
The double density 720 KB 3.5" floppy disk never really saw the light of day on the PC as they were quickly superseeded by the 1.44 MB disk, but were more popular on other platforms such as the Sinclair Spectrum (via a Disciple interface), Atari ST, Commodore Amiga (Although tighter formatting allowed a 880 KB capacity out of the same disk), etc... and used KB to mean 1024 bytes.
The quad density 1.2 MB 5.25" disk, high density 1.44 MB 3.5" disk and extended density 2.88 MB 3.5" disk all used MB to mean 1000 KB and KB to mean 1024 bytes.
It is even more confusing with other removable media technologies such as floppical, ZIP and CD.
Floppicals had their sizes quoted as 120 MB and 240 MB where a MB meant 1024 KB which in turn meant 1024 bytes.
ZIP on the other hand quoted the size of their disks to have 100 MB and 250 MB based around what hard drive manufacturers did.
CDs are in general 650 MB (74 minute disks) and 700 MB (80 minute disks) where a MB is also quoted as being 1024 KB which again is 1024 bytes.
It seems strange that the media industry can't make it's mind up whether to use 1000, 1024 or even a combination of 1000 and 1024 (as is the case with QD, HD and ED floppy disks) whilst the rest of the computing industry uses 1024.
For example: Memory - You buy 1 GB of RAM and you get 1024 MB which in turn is 1024 KB which is 1024 bytes.
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|"The 720 KB 3.5" floppies never saw the light of day on the PC"
Actually they did, they were usually called Double Density and were used on PCs before the 1.44 MB High Density disks came out. Believe it or not you can still buy them. :)
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|The Gibi, Mebi, etc nonsense will never succeed. If I ever heard someone use those I'd think they had a speech impediment or were using baby talk. "Oooh, look at da widdle mebibyte, it's so cute!! Yes you are, yes you are! Goo goo ga ga?" A kilobyte is 1024 bytes and always will be. No need to change it just because the computer illiterates their widdle hands held.
There are 10 kinds of people who understand binary, those who do and those that don't!
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|[sarcasm]
I'm still wondering why we don't have drives defined in words or double words
[/sarcasm]
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|AHH--we have a programmer in our midst... :)
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|hrmm, I think I bought more or less 6 drives between those times. Even if I cared enough to get the $30 "value" software then what would 6 copies do for me? I wonder if there is a correlation between the people who got "tricked" by the size thing and if they have an AOL account. Also, I wonder if this free software will come with 43598430834509 free hours of AOL?
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|This isn't a trick at all. This is how hard drive sizes have been determined every since IBM introduced the hard drive in the XT computer in the 1980s. Also, the fact that all hard disk companies calculate a GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes isn't the only reason for the difference in reported and actual free space. Some of the free space is lost due to bad sectors that happen because of unavoidable minor manufacturer defects.
This is just another frivolous lawsuit.
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|"This isn't a trick at all."
Oh please, the hardware companies know good and well what they are doing. Imagine if a gas station tried doing this, selling you 20 gallons of gas but actually only giving you 16 gallons or so. The IBM XT thing is a weak argument too, it's capacity was only 10MB so the difference at that time was neglibible. Buy a "500GB" hard drive on the other hand and you're losing 35GB! Bad sectors are already taken into account when the drive is made and are not included in the formatted capacity, you aren't losing any of the stated disk space to defects.
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|This is why I put it in quotes. They knew what they were doing when they chose what system use to display those numbers. Sorta why things are always $19.99 not $20. For a techie it's not a trick but only a marketing strategy, but for the average Joe it's a trick.
"Some of the free space is lost due to bad sectors that happen because of unavoidable minor manufacturer defects."
While this is technically true, that is not a factor in what numbers they chose to use. Also, quote me if I'm wrong, but bad sectors can only be detected with a low level format right? I am pretty sure if you do a regular format it will not account for bad sectors when it displays capacity.
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|Since hard disk manufacturers have been calculating a GB as 1,000MB for at least 10 years then why has it taken the majority of consumers so long to figure this out and sue someone? Hard disks have existed for years in large enough capacities to make the difference between 1GB=1,000MB and 1GB=1,024MB a very noticeable one.
As for the defective sectors that occur during manufacturing, Windows may not specifically say that your new hard disk has XXXXXX of bad sectors on your screen when you perform a high level format, but nearly all hard drives (even ones with identical capacities and model numbers) have slight but very noticeable differences in their formatted capacity.
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|I thought 1k = 1024 bytes is a standard created by Microsoft while 1k = 1000 bytes is a standard among the hardware makers.
This lawsuit actually won, how gay!!
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|What? 1KB = 1024 Bytes because computers work in BINARY, not base 10 like us humans. 8 bits is 1 byte and so on, do the math. It has absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft. Any old excuse to bash them I guess.
1kb = 1000 bytes is not a standard, it's marketing BS.
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|The prefix kilo- means 1000. There is no reason a kilobyte should not be 1000 bytes. The problem is that most software tends to call what should really be called kibibytes (KiB) kilobytes (kB).
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|In terms of computing and base 2 math kilo does mean 1024 and always has, and kibi is some stupid term that was recently created and no one will EVER use because it sounds idiotic. Everyone who knows anything about computers is will accustomed to 1024 bytes being a kilobyte, there was never any problem except for the drive manufacturers using it to their advantage to trick people.
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|Maybe the kibi- prefix does sound stupid, but it is better than the alternative of having two definitions of kilo. Kilo meant 1000 way before it was ever used in computing. Why should the computing world be able to change it just for their convenience? If they didn't want to be stuck with kibi, they shouldn't have intruded on SI prefixes in the first place.
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|Why should the computing world have to change to a made up word from an accepted term that has been used for over 20 years so you are not confused by a word having a second meaning.
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|There were people complaining about the term 20 years ago too, and where do I say I am confused? All I say is that they shouldn't use SI prefixes to mean 2^(10x). Using kibi, etc. is admittedly a band-aid solution to a 20-year misnomer, but if people actually used it we wouldn't have stupid lawsuits like this.
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|Base 2 is a completely different number system, so why should the prefixes still be in base 10?
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|It would be fine if they called KiB "base 2 kB". The problem is just that there is no way to distinguish right now if the same term has two meanings.
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|Sure there is, the word byte.
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|So you are saying 1 kb = 1000 bits and 1 kB = 1024 bytes = 8192 bits? Why should a prefix mean different things on different measuring units?
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|Why shouldn't it?
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|Because one of the main points of a standardized prefix system is that it can be applied to anything. If I know what a watt is and I know what kilo means I automatically know what a kilowatt is. If such a prefix changes meaning with different measuring units, it defeats its whole purpose.
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|Fact is, a kilobyte is 1,024 bytes. It shouldn't have been that way, or whatever--IT IS. Also, a Kb is 1,000 bits, and that cable internet that says it is 8.0 Mbps is only 8,000,000 bits per second, or 0.98 MB (megabytes) per second.
That is the way it is, and always has been. A floppy only holds 1.38MB using base 2, yet the floppy disk vendors haven't been sued, so the whole thing is BS. See my point above.
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|"Fact is, a kilobyte is 1,024 bytes."
Not true. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. For storage, 1 kilobyte usually equals 1,024 bytes. For data transmissions 1 kilobyte equals 1000 bytes. A 56k modem transmits data at 56,000 bits/second, not 57,344 bits/second. A 100mbps network transfers data at a theoretical 100,000,000 bits/sec, not 104,857,600 bits/sec.
The fact that one is bits and one is bytes is irrelevant. Kb does not always equal 1000 bits, if you describe your hard drive using bits, than it becomes 1024. If you describe your network in bytes, than 1KB becomes 1000 bits.
There are all sorts of caveats and exceptions to the rules when comparing binary to decimal in the computer world. One thing that is for certain is that the hard drive manufacturers did not create this problem (engineers back in the 50's and 60's did) and they certainly didn't adopt it to fool the public unless they had some unbelievable forsight back in the 80's that computers would be everywhere 20 years later with 750GB capacities HD's, back when a 5MB HD was huge and the decimal/binary difference made no difference at all.
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|This is all irrelevant. Hard drive manufacturers should simply make the drives a little larger so an 80GB drive will show up in Windows as 80GB, and sell it as an 80GB (binary) drive. Problem solved.
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|80 GB = 80,000,000,000 bytes
divide that number by 1024 3 times to have the number of GiB and you've got your 74.4
A gibibyte (GiB) is 2^30 bytes versus 10^9 bytes for a gigabyte (GB). Even Wikipedia has an article on that.
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|I appreciate the disclaimor, but the remedy of software is pathetic. That's like when companies advertize their computers come with "$65,000 worth of preloaded software, too." What's the value? How about refunding customers 5-8% of the cost of their drive that's missing? Even a $10 voucher towards a new WD product is better than just bits.
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|or better, the "San Francisco lawyers Adam Gutride and Seth Safier" who filed on our behalf should be compensated not with $500k but with $500k worth of the same software licenses we get.
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|This is stupid. Why do they even allow dual standard? (ex: 1k = 1024 bytes, and 1k = 1000 bytes)
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|You think that's crazy? In the early 1970's I worked for a company in which, at one point, the marketing people tried to define a byte as being 4 bits so that our products would appear to have twice as much memory!
The same marketing people were afraid of the word 'cursor', thinking it too technical for people, and wanted to rename it the 'action block'.
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