38 votes

Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

Posted by caliper
Tags: seagate, fraud, hard drives, smart, farm, cryptocurrency, chia, author.lutz labs, source.heise
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Hard-disk-fraud-Increasing-evidence-of-origin-in-China-10269059.html

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Title
Hard disk fraud: Increasing evidence of origin in China
Authors
Lutz Labs
Published
Feb 4 2025
Word count
649 words

9 comments

  1. caliper
    Link
    TLDR; Seagate HDDs are being sold as new. SMART values indicate new, but Seagate’s own numbers (FARM) indicate drives have in excess of 20,000 running hours. It looks like the drives all come from...

    TLDR; Seagate HDDs are being sold as new. SMART values indicate new, but Seagate’s own numbers (FARM) indicate drives have in excess of 20,000 running hours. It looks like the drives all come from China and have been cleared to look like new.

    This is a very interesting story that has been developing over the last week. You can check yourself, by comparing the output of the following 2 commands.

    # smartctl -a /dev/sdh | grep -i "power_on"
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1411
# smartctl -a /dev/sdh -l farm | grep -i "power on hours"
Power on Hours: 23868

    Or:
    https://github.com/gamestailer94/farm-check?tab=readme-ov-file

    21 votes
  2. CptBluebear
    Link
    So this mainly affects larger drives, models ST16000NM000J and ST16000NM001G of 16TB, additionally ST12000NM0127 and ST12000NM0558 with 12TB. Incidentally it also affects 4, 10, and 18TB disks,...

    So this mainly affects larger drives, models
    ST16000NM000J and ST16000NM001G of 16TB, additionally ST12000NM0127 and ST12000NM0558 with 12TB.

    Incidentally it also affects 4, 10, and 18TB disks, but infrequently.

    You can easily check your own disk to see what the actual lifetime of the disk has been.

    Heise mentions a list of countries and you can count the Netherlands among them.

    8 votes
  3. [7]
    goose
    Link
    Interesting. I have six brand new 16 TB Seagate model ST16000NM002G drives I just bought, one of which I purchased from mainland China. The other five from domestic sellers. I also have a single...

    Interesting. I have six brand new 16 TB Seagate model ST16000NM002G drives I just bought, one of which I purchased from mainland China. The other five from domestic sellers. I also have a single 14 TB Seagate model ST14000NM004G drive, purchased domestically. None of them appear to have this Farm SMART log. Is it exclusive to SATA drives?

    1 vote
    1. [6]
      caliper
      Link Parent
      That's surprising, but I don't really know all the details because I don't own any new Seagate drives myself. Which version of smartmontools are you using? On the github repo I see an issue raised...

      That's surprising, but I don't really know all the details because I don't own any new Seagate drives myself. Which version of smartmontools are you using? On the github repo I see an issue raised that's related to the version.

      1 vote
      1. [5]
        goose
        Link Parent
        Ah, good question. I'm on Debian, which certainly is not known for keeping the most up-to-date packages. smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155

        Ah, good question. I'm on Debian, which certainly is not known for keeping the most up-to-date packages.

        smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155

        1. [4]
          caliper
          Link Parent
          Oh yeah, you might want to try 7.4. This is the issue I was checking

          Oh yeah, you might want to try 7.4. This is the issue I was checking

          3 votes
          1. [3]
            goose
            Link Parent
            Thanks for that link. Just submitted a pull request to fix it.

            Thanks for that link. Just submitted a pull request to fix it.

            1 vote
            1. [2]
              caliper
              Link Parent
              Nice! I hope your drives turned out to be real new.

              Nice! I hope your drives turned out to be real new.

              2 votes
              1. goose
                Link Parent
                They are, thankfully. I'm wondering how widespread this issue is. I did just buy another Seagate cold spare from mainland China a few days ago, I'll definitely pay attention to check the FARM data...

                They are, thankfully. I'm wondering how widespread this issue is. I did just buy another Seagate cold spare from mainland China a few days ago, I'll definitely pay attention to check the FARM data once it arrives.

                2 votes