Western Digital Class Action Settlement Approved; Suit Alleged Hard Drive Capacity Numbers Were Misleading

Market Wire
2006-07-27

Lawyers for a nationwide class of hard disk drive purchasers announced today that a federal judge approved their settlement with Western Digital Corporation over claims the company's representations of hard drive storage capacities were misleading. The settlement is not an admission of misconduct on the part of Western Digital, which denies any wrongdoing or liability.

Class members who register for the settlement at www.wdc.com/settlement will receive free backup and recovery software with an estimated retail value of $30. An estimated one million purchasers are eligible for the software.

The suit claimed that Western Digital overstated its hard disk drives' storage capacities by approximately 7%. For example, it alleged that Western Digital 80GB hard disk drives had an actual capacity of only 74.4GB.

Western Digital and other hard drive makers use the decimal definition of GB or gigabyte, where 1 GB equals 1 billion bytes. Computer operating systems like Windows and Apple define GB using a binary definition, where 1 GB equals 1,073,741,824 bytes. The suit claimed that because of the disparity, consumers could not store as much data as expected. The settlement requires Western Digital to disclose its definition of GB on future packaging.

The law firm Gutride Safier LLP, which represented the purchasers, was pleased with the result. "This settlement ends a misleading practice and compensates anyone who was harmed," said attorney Adam Gutride. "Each purchaser is entitled to software with an estimated retail value of $30."

Class members who want the free software must fill out a claim at www.wdc.com/settlement no later than July 15, 2006.

The settlement was approved on June 15, 2006 by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernard Zimmerman in San Francisco. The case is Orin Safier v. Western Digital Corporation, No. 05-03353 BZ.