Western Digital Hard Drive Settlement

There's a settlement for a class-action lawsuit brought against Western Digital. The suit is based on the whole binary vs. decimal "controversy" - HD manufacturers measure capacity using the decimal number system while OS manufacturers use the binary number system.

Using the binary number system, 80 GB amounts to 85,899,345,920 bytes.
Using the decimal number system, 80 GB amounts to 80,000,000,000 bytes.

That's a difference of 5,899,345,920 bytes. Windows takes a drive with 80,000,000,000 bytes (as labeled by the drive maker) and displays it has having a capacity of about 74.4 GB.

Settlement details are at http://www.wdc.com/settlement/. WD "decided to settle to avoid a potentially expensive legal battle". The settlement includes back up /restore software and is available to those that have purchased a boxed WD HD between 2001-03-22 and 2006-02-15. Registration must be completed before 2006-07-16.