A lot of people have asked me - why does my 40Gb hard drive, when formatted only show 38Gb? And I normally explain that hardware manufacturers don’t use the same Gigabyte that the rest of the world uses. They make certain assumptions about a Megabyte or a Gigabyte that aren’t true. But to say Seagate have actually mislead the public, sounds a little harsh. I think, in Seagate’s defense, that they were really only trying to keep things un-complicated for the end user. After all, it’s easier to say "Can I have a 200Gb drive please?" rather than "Can I have a 190.7Gb drive please?" Seagate rounded up to inflate their product, but the rounding is there because that’s how we communicate with each other - the whole numbers being more important than the fractions.

Getting back to the story, however, Seagate have been found to be misleading customers with their claims of storage sizes and are now being asked to pay damages to the customers - on 6.2 million hard drive sales!! Seagate are offering either a cash refund (which equates to 5% of the original cost - according to court documents), or free backup & restore software. However, as you have to provide evidence that you bought it & where, including receipts, there are going to be virtually no claims as far as I can see. It does however send a wake-up call to Seagate and any other manufacturers that they make sure they don’t over-inflate their capacities. This can only be good for me - people will no longer ask me why the capacity is different in windows.. [SHOW ME]