Fraud with used hard drives: information leads to China, Seagate examines incidents 40 comments
Picture: Seagate
If fraud occurs with used Seagate hard drives, Heise reports they could come from China. Meanwhile, the German dealers and Seagate themselves maintain their innocence. Dealer feedback is now available and Seagate wants to review the cases carefully.
At the end of January, after research by Heise’s Public, it was poorly sold by Seagate in the online trade, although they already had many opening hours on the clock. The actual term could only be discovered with special tools, as the smart settings were reset.
In the meantime, more than 200 references to fraud
Meanwhile, Heise has now reportedly received more than 200 readers. Reports come not only from German customers, but also from Austria, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Switzerland or even the USA and Japan. A global fraud point is suspected as a result.
Origin in China suspected
In another article, Heise points out that references to an origin in China. It is assumed that used hard drives from old server farms come to the cry of Chia’s cryptocurrency.
When it was still worth it, global sales of hard drives had increased massively and even led to bottlenecks. In the meantime, however, energy costs exceed the reduced profits, so these computer farms are turned off again and there are many used hard drives.
What are the dealers saying?
In a new report, Heise’s statements from German online retailers as well as a new message from Seagate have compiled.
Alternate, for example, ensures that neither the store nor its German suppliers know that it is not new. Customers could contact [email protected] for such an incident. Galaxus has put a help page on the subject online and refers to its customer support. Proshop customers could send in their hard drives for free and receive a replacement. Others point out that in such cases the legal warranty takes effect, while Wortmann wanted to check the hard drive before any compensation.
The full statements can be read at Heise.
Seagate wants to investigate the incidents
Seagate released another, more detailed statement this time. It says the manufacturer takes the matter “very seriously” and announces a “thorough review.” As before, it is assured that Seagate has nothing to do with this and always delivers new goods to dealers. Seagate believes that “the hard drives were re-branded somewhere in the supply chain to the used market and resold as new.”
References to corresponding incidents can be reported directly to Seagate at wirseagate.com, it is said.
How can you check if you are affected?
Usually the operating hours of a HDD or SSD are stored in Smart Settings and can be read with simple tools such as Crystalsiskinfo or HDD Sentinel. In these cases, however, the smart values were apparently reset, as is also the case with recertified models from Seagate. Only a query of agricultural values (reliability parameters accessible in the field) revealed the actual operating hours which, in the cases described, were 15,000 to 50,000 hours.
On the one hand, agricultural values can be read with SmartMontools. The open source software is available for Linux, Mac and Windows. The following code must be entered via the command line:
Note: the “A” at the end represents the 1st hard drive, a “B” (SDB) would be for the second, a “C” (SDC) for the third and so on.
It should be noted that the farm query only works from version 7.4.
Alternatively, an agricultural query can also be performed with Seagate Seatols.
Topics: Seagate Storage Hard Drives
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