Western Digital Giving Away Free Stuff

I got this in email yesterday:

Quote:

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You are receiving this notice because our records indicate that you purchased an aftermarket Western Digital Corporation ("WD") hard disk drive between March 22, 2001 and February 15, 2006. "Aftermarket" purchasers are those who purchased their hard disk drives separately rather than pre-installed by an original equipment manufacturer into a computer.

A proposed class action settlement may affect your legal rights. If the settlement is approved, you may be eligible to receive free hard disk drive backup and recovery software from WD. Read below for a summary of the proposed settlement. For a detailed legal notice and complete terms, please visit www.wdc.com/settlement.

A class action lawsuit entitled Safier v. Western Digital Corporation is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit claims that in the sale and marketing of its hard disk drives, Western Digital overstates the useable storage capacity. According to the lawsuit, when attached to most personal computers, a hard disk drive advertised as having "80GB" will only show an available capacity of "74.4GB." The lawsuit alleges that one reason for this disparity is the existence of two different measurements of a "GB," one of which is used by computer operating systems and another of which is used by hard disk drive manufacturers. The lawsuit seeks restitution, damages, punitive damages, and injunctive relief. The lawsuit is case number 05-03353 BZ.

WD has denied any wrongdoing or liability. WD believes that its marketing and advertising complied and continues to comply in all respects with the law. WD further believes that no Class Member, including the Plaintiff, has sustained any damages or injuries. Nonetheless, WD has concluded that further conduct of the Litigation would be protracted and expensive, and that it is desirable that the Litigation be fully and finally settled in the manner and upon the terms and conditions of the proposed settlement.

If the Court approves the settlement, WD will change how it markets and advertises the available storage capacity of its hard disk drives. WD also will provide eligible Class Members with free backup and recovery software to use with their hard disk drives. WD will be released from any further related claims by Class Members. Plaintiff's Counsel will ask the Court to award, and WD agrees to pay, an award of attorneys' fees of up to $485,000 and expenses of up to $15,000. Class Members will not be required to pay these attorneys' fees or costs.

You have four options about how to respond to the proposed settlement. Before making a decision, you should read the full explanation of the proposed settlement and release of claims at www.wdc.com/settlement. You have only a limited time to make your decision:

Option 1. Sign Up To Receive Free Software As Part Of The Settlement.
To get the software, you must fill out the Claim Form available at http://www.wdc.com/settlement no later than thirty days after Final Approval of the settlement. If you sign up for the free software, you give up your right to bring a separate lawsuit against Western Digital.

Option 2. Exclude Yourself From the Class
To preserve your right to bring a separate lawsuit, you must exclude yourself from the class. To do so, you must mail a letter by May 19, 2006, according to the instructions available at www.wdc.com/settlement. By excluding yourself, you won't get the free software.

Option 3. Make An Objection To The Settlement
To object to the settlement, you must serve legal papers on counsel for the parties by May 24, 2006, according to the instructions available at www.wdc.com/settlement.

Option 4. Do Nothing
If you do nothing, you won't get the free software. You also give up your right to bring a separate lawsuit against Western Digital.


To get more information about the settlement or about options 1-3, please visit http://www.wdc.com/settlement.

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If you have one of their HDD's, you might be due some free swag.

Oh, I have a WD 80 GB hard drive that shows up to have an actual capacity of 74.4 GB. However, the interesting part that is my 80-GBs Samsung shows an actual capacity of 74.6 -lower than advertised, just like WD. I always considered this to be a matter of tecnological "custom". You know 1 MB equals to 1024 Kb as well.

Thanks for the info :bow:

all my hard disks are WD Well i lie actualy.
i have a matsui or sumthing (died 4 times and ive revived it every time )

one question..
how did they get your email??

Your not telling me i should actualy fill out those post cards they put in the box with the hdd are you?

Excuse me this dumb nub question, but when I recently had hard drive issues, I bought one of these WD 80GB hard drives refurbished from MicroCenter.

During the tedious conversations I had with their employees and numerous tech support calls, I was told some where along the line that all hard drives were partitioned to leave just a smidge of 'elbow room.' Like when I look at my internal hard drive, it says '153 GB capacity,' even though I purchased this computer with a 160 GB HD.

This isn't the same thing? Or did I misunderstand what those people meant?

and actualy i would chose option 3 :)

WD give me good HDD's for inexpensive prices.
Im a little fed up with these pointless law suits,

When sun sue's microsoft over the Java thing i thought well i guess thats ok.
But now i always have stupid viruses residing in my sun java folder.
Never happend with MSVM...

all this law suit stuff just makes Us end users suffer.
I dont want WD jacking up their prices cos of some Yank who has nothing better to do than complain about 4oo poxy Mb.

LOL.. I like this :) "Pure class"
Apparently, Plaintiff believes that he could sue an egg company for fraud for labeling a carton of 12 eggs a “dozen,” because some bakers would view a “dozen” as including 13 items.

Quote:

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Surely Western Digital cannot be blamed for how software companies use the term “gigabyte”—a binary usage which, according to Plaintiff’s complaint, ignores both the historical meaning of the term and the teachings of the industry standards bodies. In describing its HDD’s, Western Digital uses the term properly. Western Digital cannot be expected to reform the software industry.[2] Furthermore, there is no conceivable reason that consumers would perceive the size of Western Digital’s HDD’s as different in any respect from the size of other HDD’s on the market. All major HDD manufacturers offer HDD’s in the same, industry standard, decimal-defined storage capacities (e.g., 80 GB, 120 GB, 250 GB). Thus, a consumer buying an HDD is comparing decimal gigabytes from one HDD company to decimal gigabytes from another HDD company—regardless of what software companies may be doing. Accordingly, price and reliability, not storage capacity nomenclature, are determinative of a customer’s decision to purchase from one HDD manufacturer over another. In short, Plaintiff’s claims are meritless.

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Figured. Now where's my free stuff?

I think they just settled this way knowing it would be such a pain going through all those links that no one would actually do it for the promise of 'software'

lol click any of the links.
Scroll all the way down to the bottom.

and there is a little link there for the software.

I went looking for details on option 3,
couldnt seem to find them.

Where's the link for a preorder of M:TW 2? All I see here is EMC Dantz Retrospect Express.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Just A Girl

one question..
how did they get your email??

Your not telling me i should actualy fill out those post cards they put in the box with the hdd are you?

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Not exactly; had to provide contact info to get the sales rebate. The external HDD I bought was almost free after WD's & the retailer's rebates - but they both got my address and email in return. Surprisingly, they haven't bugged me with ads, so far (11 months).

I think they're trying to give away recovery software, ala Ghost, but you're right Proletariat they purposely make the process byzantine in complexity, hoping they don't get many actual takers. I guess that's the result of the unholy marriage of marketers with lawyers.

I know a lot of OEM rebate checks that get issued when folks buy electronic stuff, end up never cashed; they're sent 3rd class mail, with slightly defective addresses (missing/insufficient street numbers, etc), so never get delivered. Mail out 10,000 $5 rebate checks, only 2,000 get cashed, = savings $40,000.

Sounds like a scam mail.

exactly

I decided to try the old software link my self..

you get 2 choices.
download and PRINT a pdf file. Fill out the form and send it

(post mark date dosent count aparantly, so if you do send the form, they can just say they did not RECIEVE it before the alloted time, "says plain as day Must be receved before a certain date NOT post marked")

Then option number 2 is enter you WD's HDD's Serial humber.

Well I have HDD's coming out of my ears.
so i grabed 1 out of the old spairs box.
enterd the serial number....
And Nothing happend...
"maby that one was to old i thought" (was a 3gb disk)

So i get the serial number from one of the 250GB WD hdd's
And Loe and behold...
Nothing happens.

What do they expect to do with just a serial Number. ?
They gonna GUESS who bought it?

Any way dosent bother me,
and for a scam email its a bit daft...

I mean it didnt ask for my address,
or My name.
Didnt make me set up an account,
Or enter a password.

So i dont know if its a scam email what do they expect to gain is a mystery

Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...tware&n=541966

lists the software (EMC Dantz Retrospect) as a ~$100 value. But the product reviews are not encouraging. Sounds like a lot of legalese to wade thru, only to get a product that I probably won't use. So, I'll not be taking them up on their offer.

I only posted the email because there are so many WestDigital HD's out there, and someone else here may want that kind of recovery software.

I think posting the email was a good thing.
made me laugh...

Well the bit where they say.
"Aparantly the plaintif can sue an egg seller for marking a box of 12 eggs as a dosen when bakers call 13 a dosen."

I thought that was pure class.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Just A Girl

So i dont know if its a scam email what do they expect to gain is a mystery

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Did you try it with an 80 GB hard drive, like the article mentioned?

Thats a point...
Ive probably have one of those here some where...

But all the hard disks are the same. 250gb isnt 250gb So i dont know why it would not accept that s/n

not even 1 80Gig WD hdd any where to be seen.
But i did find out i have more than only WD hdd's lol

I have a 3 maxtor's, and 2 segates,
1 Conner and the conner is a massive 540 mb lol
and a decent amount of the old WD Caviar's.

So im happy now lol.
I just keep finding more HDD's lol

I was depressed for 2 months when my seagate raptor sata /raid 120 gb hdd overheated and failed. Some company said $4000 ausd minimum to recover the files, and considering the time I spent collating data nearly paid it !

My brother had a look at it but said it was not recoverable and the place I got it from said that it was cracked in the workings somewhere so not covered by warranty.

It's now a door stop/paper weight and a very expensive one at that !

I'll stick to multiple WD 80gb drives I think. 4 fans already make enough noise and I don't trust liquid cooling systems lol!

Nightmarish lesson learned but I think HDD manufacturers should provide recovery software as standard. At least if the drive isn't too far gone you could recover something.

And yeah if you never gave them info I'd say it's a scam for sure.

With multiple drives you can RAID them for speed and/or redundancy.

I would go for speed and have a proper back up program of all vital data files.

This is where having separate OS, app and data save areas can be very useful as you really only need to backup unique data.

Family pics and saved games are probably the most overlooked unique data aside from work style stuff.

The difference between a professional and an amateur is that a pro will be able to get back up from a disaster. In the case of IT that means having backups.