Seagate Hard Drives Fraud: Dealers Sell Used Hard Drives As New Goods 17 comments
Picture: Seagate
In various online retailers, hard drives from the manufacturer Seagate were sold as supposedly new products. Heise reports it online and draws on complaints from at least 50 affected readers. According to diagnostic tools, the EXOS series server hard drives had already had tens of thousands of operating hours.
The new hard drive turned out to be second-hand products
Last week, Heise initially received a note from a reader that he had acquired two Seagate Exos series 14 TB hard drives (ST14000NM005G) from a German online retailer in early January. Although the smart values initially remained discreet, a subsequent check of the so-called agricultural values (reliability metrics accessible in the field) with the SmartMontools software showed that the hard drives had already completed 10,000 or even 15,000 hours.
He returned those drives and ordered two 16TB Seagate hard drives from another Seagate. These signs of wear have also shown and, according to SmartMontools, even 22,000 hours. All four hard drives were also OEM drives with no manufacturer warranty, which dealers would not report. The hard drives were sold as new merchandise, nor did they carry the green-bordered sticker of the officially released Seagate hard drives.
Many other cases
Heise then encouraged readers to report on other cases and also check their acquired hard drives with SmartMontools. In a second article it says: “But at least 50 of our readers probably received a used model when purchasing a hard drive from Seagate in the last few weeks.”
Traders such as Amazon, JB Computer, Mindfactory and Reichelt were often called. The other stores are alternatives, Böttcher, Büroshop 24, Galaxus, Jacob, Kosatec, Maingau and Proshop. Some of Seagate’s partner stores.
Again, Seagate Exos series hard drives are affected, including mainly models with 16 TB. But there are also reports of some 12 TB drives and sometimes models with storage capacity of 4, 10 and 18 TB. The agricultural values selected were said to be between 15,000 and 36,000 hours, but around 50,000 hours were even reported in two 4 TB models. In some cases, However, as such recognizable general HDDs, hard drives were sold as new merchandise.
It is still unclear how these used hard drives could be for sale. Since new goods are placed here, it is a fraud. Affected customers should claim their hard drive from the dealer, whereby a screenshot or log file with said farm value may be helpful.
How can you determine agricultural values?
On the one hand, agricultural values can be read with the mentioned SmartMontools. The open source software is available for Linux, Mac and Windows. The following code must be entered via the command line:
However, the farm query only works from version 7.4, which should be observed.
Alternatively, an agricultural request can be made with Seagate Seatols.
The editorial team welcomes any indication of any case in the comments on this news story.
Topics: Hard Drives Seagate Storage Source: Heise
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