Statement from Seagate: the manufacturer Comments on fraud with used hard drives 41 comments
Picture: Seagate
Seagate is responding to media reports about cases of fraud during the sale of the manufacturer’s hard drives in online retail. In the statement, Seagate denies any involvement and recommends purchasing hard drives from Seagate certified channel partners.
In the background
Last week, Heise reported on a reader who had acquired a total of four hard drives from the so-called Seagate Exos family server in German online trading. After determining the signs of wear, an analysis with SmartMontools software showed that all hard drives used tens of thousands of hours of operation. In a second report, Heise recently referenced at least 50 other reported cases that are spread across purchases from various online retailers. In the meantime, those affected have also spoken out in the computer base forum.
Official statement from Seagates
Seagate made an official statement this afternoon this afternoon that references the news reports about the fraud. He says:
Seagate did not sell or missell these hard drives to dealers. We recommend that dealers purchase hard drives only from Certified Seagate Distribution Partners to ensure that they only acquire and sell new drives that are new or recertified by Seagate.
Seagate
However, what is not clear at this stage is the fact that, according to the Heise report among the affected dealers there were also some of Seagate’s official partners. Techtip pointed Seagate to this fact and is still awaiting a response.
According to readers, various retailers delivered the hard drives and Amazon, JB Computer, Mindfactory and Reichelt were mentioned in large numbers. Other mentions: Alternate, Böttcher, Büroshop 24, Galaxus, Jacob, Kosatec, Maingau and Proshop – some of them are on the list of official Seagate merchants.
Heise online
Seagate’s statement also says:
Fixed panels, certified by Seagate General, which is certified and resold under the Seagate Drive circularity program, can be recognized by the white hard drive label with green border and the “recertified” designation.
To report a suspected SEAGATE DRIVE, you can contact the Seagate Ethics Line: Seagate Ethics Assistant
Seagate
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 the mentioned 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.
However, the farm query only works from version 7.4, which should be observed.
Alternatively, an agricultural query can also be performed with Seagate Seatols.
Topics: Seagate Storage Hard Drives
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