ISTM that data recovery companies could view this as an opportunity to score some ex post facto PR points with their customers by informing them of an opportunity to recover their costs.
https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/seagatehttps://www.hbsslaw.com/uploads/case_do ... eagate.pdfQuote:
If you purchased Seagate’s Barracuda 3TB Hard Disk Drive, Backup Plus 3TB External Hard Disk Drive or another Seagate hard drive with model number ST3000DM001, you may be entitled to damages including replacement costs and damages from loss of data and data recovery expenses.
Personally I'm very sorry for Seagate, as they have always treated me very well. In the early 1990s they gave me complete technical manuals the size of phone books without charging me a cent. Their customer service was always exemplary. The only HDD manufacturer that gave me better support was Control Data, a company which Seagate subsequently purchased. I have seen just about every HDD manufacturer come and go, and I hope that this suit does not signal the end for yet another major player.
That said, some years ago I made Seagate aware of a bug in the firmware updater for their 1TB-per-platter drives, including the 3TB DM drive that is the subject of the complaint. This bug prevented the update from being applied to ANY of their targeted drives. I explained in detail the cause of the bug (wrong filenames) and also provided a simple workaround, all in their own forum. Three years later the same bug was still present, and my posts, and their old forum, had been consigned to the e-dustbin.
BTW, I'm not suggesting that a firmware update would have reduced the chances of failure.