heads-up: used Seagate enterprise HDDs sold as new - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2025, 03:11:48 pm
content: Many buyers of Seagate enterprise HDDs report getting used disks when buying brand new ones from reputable resellers. The SMART values are altered to hide the operating hours, but the FARM values still reveal the truth. Some hints are pointing to Chia farms in China being shut down and discarding > 400k disks. You can check the FARM values with smartmontools or Seagate's Seatools.Media: Hard disk fraud: Increasing evidence of origin in China (https://www.heise.de/en/news/Hard-disk-fraud-Increasing-evidence-of-origin-in-China-10269059.html)

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 05, 2025, 12:37:12 am
content: Worth watching

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2025, 11:38:15 am
content: Testing hours?

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2025, 12:53:48 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on February 05, 2025, 11:38:15 amThere were examples of disks with more than 20,000 hours reported in the FARM logs. That's maybe a bit too much testingAnd, unlike official Seagate refurbished drives, the reported drives are not in any way marked on the label as refurbished.So someone reset the SMART Values, but did not have the ability to also reset the FARM statistics. As far as i know that is done the same way on official refurbs, but these drives were not marked such.But Seagate drives were always a can of worms. It was already virtually impossible to get a proper retail drive with the actual and proper 5 year seagate warranty.Many shops were selling OEM drives not originally intended for endusers, thus having no manufacturer warranty. Even worse: if you asked the shop if they sell retail or OEM drives, often the answer was: We do not know.@Halcyon: This particular case does not only affect Amazon. Many retailers in the EU are affected, pointing to an issue with a larger distributor.

author: Simmed
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2025, 02:40:27 pm
content: i remember seeing the chatter some years agou can see a ton of search results from googleby now they are probably professionals at it

author: edavid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2025, 03:42:40 pm
content: I thought everyone knew that on Amazon, you only buy drives that are actually sold by Amazon.com

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2025, 03:51:07 pm
content: Unless Amazon has stopped their practice of commingling nominally identical SKUs even if they belong to different vendors, it will not help to limit purchases to "Sold and shipped by Amazon".One bad actor, whose harddrives are mixed into the stock, is enough that you can receive such a used drive.

author: edavid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2025, 04:24:29 pm
content: Quote from: Ranayna on February 05, 2025, 03:51:07 pmYes, I believe that they have stopped, or at least they are not commingling Amazon stock with other vendors' stock.QuoteDoesn't everyone check the warranty after receiving the drive?(And FYI, the way to check the FARM values mentioned is to install smartmontools 7.4.1 and use "smartctl -l farm".)

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2025, 07:05:53 pm
content: Quote from: edavid on February 05, 2025, 04:24:29 pmSure. But you can only do that after you bought it and then have all the hassle with sending the drive back and getting your money back.It took a while to find a retailer that actually knew it's not selling OEM drives.

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 06, 2025, 01:53:29 am
content: How often do you ask yourself: how hard is it to put a append-only, signed memory inside HDD enclosure?

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 06, 2025, 03:40:36 am
content: Quote from: Ranayna on February 05, 2025, 12:53:48 pmThe video was more than just that. It highlights some glaring issues regarding Seagate drives generally.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 07, 2025, 04:25:50 pm
content: Update and new statement from Seagate:Fraud with Seagate hard disks: Dealers swap, Seagate investigates (https://www.heise.de/en/news/Fraud-with-Seagate-hard-disks-Dealers-swap-Seagate-investigates-10274864.html)

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2025, 12:06:24 pm
content: LOL, there is something to it.Code:smartctl -a /dev/sdc | grep Power.*Hours9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 091 091 000 Old_age Always - 8522smartctl -l farm /dev/sdc | grep Power.*HoursPower on Hours: 47379Spindle Power on Hours: 403942879764But hey, I knew it's gonna be something suspicious and at $25 for 8TB I'm not complaining

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2025, 02:29:48 pm
content: My first HDD was a 40 megabyte Seagate back in late eighties. It was absolutely fine a drive. In the nineties, in the IDE (pATA) era, I grew to distrust Seagate consumer drives, and haven't touched Seagate drives in a quarter century. This news does not surprise me, nor does Seagate's evasive response.(No, I'm not the kind to be swayed by problems in a single model. Even Enterprise-series Hitachi and Western Digital have such in their lineups. It was more about the direction the manufacturer was going with successive models, and dealing with model-specific issues.)

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2025, 10:21:01 pm
content: Too bad brands are nowadays a poor measure of anything.Being treated like a mushroom leaves no much better options, though, so I’ll probably stick to WD for spinning rust. Even despite their SMR and greens situations. I know it’s almost useless, but it’s the only heuristic available.Code:Device Model: WDC WD1002FAEX-00Y9A0…9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 001 001 000 Old_age Always - 106960

author: DonKu
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 09, 2025, 02:52:03 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 08, 2025, 02:29:48 pmI'll never use Seagate again. Their 1T HDDs consistently failed - sometimes simultaneously in pairs (eg RAID).They waved a big red flag when their warranty quietly dropped from 3 years down to 2 years. It left me with a flipped feeling; as though the principals cashed out and the new owners wanted to strip mine cash regardless of reputational damage.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 09, 2025, 09:19:21 am
content: I don't care and buy random brands, only doing a search to see if the particular model might be known for unusually high failure rate or other gotchas such as SMR (not that it's a total dealbreaker, but undesirable for some workloads) or being 7200 falsely advertised as 5400 (which was a WD thing IIRC).Also, WD Green ate my mother's data a few years ago and a 2.5" WD Blue got a stuck head for no clear reason in my laptop. So there is that, I'm never buying WD again. Except that I don't care, it's all random and in the past I have caught one Seagate seemingly being close to failure too.These days I just try to keep backups and test disks from time to time for errors and suspicious latency spikes (meaning, hundreds or thousands of ms worth of retries to read a sector, particularly if it happens to many random sectors).

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 09, 2025, 09:56:03 am
content: Everyone has their "go-to" brand and all brands have had their duds in the past. Is that reflective of a larger, on-going issue? Maybe? That's up for debate. Some seem to have a better track record than others.However when it comes to buying hard drives either for myself, or for any purpose that needs that assurance, I always buy from a reputable dealer. There are reasons why 10TB+ enterprise drives cost upwards of AUD$400 per drive, with wholesale discounts (in single-drive quantities).

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2025, 02:26:59 pm
content: Hard disk fraud: More programs, detection methods for other manufacturers (https://www.heise.de/en/news/Hard-disk-fraud-More-programs-detection-methods-for-other-manufacturers-10278484.html)

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2025, 07:50:06 am
content: 1972 Watergate2002 Rywingate2015 Dieselgate2025 Seagate

author: Squarewave
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2025, 02:53:45 pm
content: Since the 90s, I've always known them as Crashgate.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2025, 10:37:18 am
content: Ironwolf also affected: Hard drive fraud is becoming more sophisticated (https://www.heise.de/en/news/Ironwolf-also-affected-Hard-drive-fraud-is-becoming-more-sophisticated-10287099.html)

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2025, 11:20:59 am
content: Hard disk fraud: Details of the Seagate investigation (https://www.heise.de/en/news/Hard-disk-fraud-Details-of-the-Seagate-investigation-10296444.html)

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 07, 2025, 12:03:08 pm
content: Even more sophisticated: Seagate hard disks sold with manipulated FARM values (https://www.heise.de/en/news/Hard-disk-fraud-Larger-disks-with-false-FARM-values-have-emerged-10308297.html)

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2025, 12:53:27 pm
content: Still ongoing:Fraud with Seagate hard disks: No end in sight -https://www.heise.de/en/news/Fraud-with-Seagate-hard-disks-No-end-in-sight-10418326.html

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2025, 10:39:28 am
content: First raid and arrests in Malaysia:- Fraud with Seagate hard disks: Arrests in Malaysia -https://www.heise.de/en/news/Fraud-with-Seagate-hard-disks-Arrests-in-Malaysia-10535171.htmlTL;DR:- police raided a counterfeiter's shop near Kuala Lumpur in May and arrested 6 men- collaboration between Seagate and law enforcement- HDDs from Seagate, Toshiba and WD were found- they didn't just reset SMART values but also 'upgraded' HDDs to more expensive models- Seagate believes that all HDDs are from China